Kim Ghattas is an analyst, advisor and author with more than 20 years of experience covering the Middle East, international affairs and US foreign policy. She builds on her first-hand knowledge of the Arab world and her continued access to key players and decision makers in the region and in the U.S. to provide incisive take-aways on international affairs and help others connect the dots between global events. A leading voice on Middle Eastern affairs, her expertise on risk and opportunities in regional and geopolitical trends is sought after by of policy makers and institutions in the region and in the U.S.

Growing up in Lebanon during the civil war, dodging bullets and mortar shells on the way to school, she decided to become a journalist at the age of 13 to make sense of the world and explain it to others.

She is contributing writer at The Atlantic, a non-resident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a regular commentator on CNN, NPR, and other media outlets.

During her time covering the Middle East for the BBC and the Financial Times, she reported extensively on Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan as well her home country of Lebanon. She was part of the Emmy award winning BBC team that covered the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Later, as a State Department correspondent based in Washington D.C., she traveled hundreds of thousands of miles around the world with U.S. secretaries of state Condoleeza Rice, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, interviewing all of them extensively.

Her work setting up a news bureau in Beirut for the BBC and running news operations, as well as her recent work leading the family business through two years of economic crisis in Lebanon all give her an additional, unique understanding of business operations, crisis, crisis and contingency planning in the Middle East. She is the author of the NYT bestseller, The Secretary, focused on U.S. foreign policy and her travels around the world with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (2013). Her second book, Black Wave, on the Saudi-Iran rivalry, was a NYT Top 100 Notable book of 2020 and has become a reference for universities and diplomats. She serves on the board of Trustees of the American University of Beirut and chairs the board of directors of the organization of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ). She was born and raised in Beirut. She speaks Arabic, French and Dutch.