Shanthi Kalathil is a distinguished advisor, consultant, and speaker specializing in national security, democratic resilience, and strategic competition in the information age. In her previous role as Deputy Assistant to the President and Coordinator for Democracy and Human Rights at the National Security Council under President Biden, she oversaw the organization of the President’s inaugural Summit for Democracy and the development of the first US Strategy on Countering Corruption, among other key initiatives.

Before joining the Biden Administration, Kalathil served as senior director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy, where she examined authoritarian challenges to democracy in the information age. Her career spans key positions at the US Agency for International Development, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the World Bank, and other international affairs organizations, highlighting her expertise at the intersection of technology, governance, and international affairs.

A former Hong Kong-based reporter for the Asian Wall Street Journal, Kalathil has authored and edited numerous policy and scholarly publications, including Diplomacy, Development and Security in the Information Age (Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University, 2013), and with Taylor C. Boas, Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003).

Kalathil sits on the boards of Radio Free Asia and the National Democratic Institute and holds degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and the London School of Economics and Political Science.