Alyssa Ayres

ALYSSA AYRES is senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is a foreign policy practitioner and award-winning author with senior experience in the government, nonprofit, and private sectors. Her book about India's global rise, "Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World," was published in January 2018, and was selected as a Financial Times "Summer 2018: Politics" pick.

Ayres served previously as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia from 2010 to 2013, covering a dynamic region of 1.3 billion people (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and providing policy direction for four U.S. embassies and four consulates. Prior to serving in the Obama administration, Ayres was founding director of the India and South Asia practice at McLarty Associates, the Washington-based international strategic advisory firm, from 2008 to 2010. Immediately prior, she served in the U.S. Department of State as special assistant to the undersecretary for political affairs as a CFR international affairs fellow.

Her book on nationalism, culture, and politics in Pakistan, "Speaking Like a State," was published by Cambridge University Press in 2009. It received the 2011-2012 American Institute of Pakistan Studies book prize. Ayres speaks Hindi and Urdu, and in the mid-1990s worked as an interpreter for the International Committee of the Red Cross. She received an AB magna cum laude from Harvard College, and an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago, where her dissertation was defended with distinction.