WASHINGTON, DC — Armenian-American Nina Hachigian has been appointed as the United States’ ambassador to the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) by the Obama administration.
Hachigian, 47, of Los Angeles, will represent the United States in dealings with the economically powerful group of 10 Southeast Asian countries based in Jakarta, Indonesia, which will be her new home.
Nina Hachigian is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Based in Los Angeles, she focuses on great power relationships, the U.S.-China relationship, international institutions, and U.S. foreign policy. She is co-author of The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise (Simon & Schuster, 2008).
Prior to CAP, Hachigian was a senior political scientist at RAND Corporation and served as the director of the RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy for four years. Before RAND, she had an international affairs fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations during which she researched the Internet in China. From 1998 to 1999, Hachigian was on the staff of the National Security Council in the White House. Earlier, she was an attorney-advisor to the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.
Hachigian has published numerous reports, book chapters, and journal articles, including essays in Foreign Affairs, The Washington Quarterly, Democracy, and Survival, as well as op-ed pieces appearing in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the South China Morning Post, among others. Her earlier book was The Information Revolution in Asia (RAND, 2003). She has been a guest of “Real Time with Bill Maher,” CNN, Fox News, BBC, and NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition”. She is on the board of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Affairs at Stanford University and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy. Hachigian received her B.S. from Yale University and her J.D. from Stanford Law School.
