Washington, D.C. — Alan Yu, a veteran diplomat and senior foreign policy official with decades of international experience, is joining the Center for American Progress as senior vice president for National Security and International Policy.
“It’s a pleasure to welcome Alan back to CAP,” said Patrick Gaspard, president and CEO of CAP. “There is no one better equipped to guide the organization as we do all that we can to help the United States reestablish that it leads in the world through alliance building and with a rights framework, at a time when we’re dealing increasingly with borderless challenges of global health security, climate change, insufficient supply chain resilience, and a fundamental lack of accountability.”
Yu brings to CAP over three decades of working on some of the biggest challenges for the United States in the world, from energy and environment to human rights to international trade to nonproliferation. His work at the State Department has included stints in the East Asian, African, European, and Economic and Business Affairs bureaus, and assignments overseas in China, Japan, and Afghanistan. He also served in the Department of Energy as its senior official responsible for clean energy policy toward countries in the Indo-Pacific. Most recently, he was a senior adviser to Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, focusing on climate policy with countries across the Indo-Pacific region. Yu is returning to CAP, where he served previously as a senior fellow and director for international climate policy.
Yu started his career as a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching math and English in the Central African Republic. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and a master’s in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley.
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