Adnan Kifayat is a senior resident fellow at GMF, where he advises on GMF programs to strengthen leadership development and strategies for engagement in the transatlantic region, as well as GMF’s Leadership, Diversity, and Inclusion Initiative.  He is also head of Global Security Ventures for the Gen Next Foundation.

Kifayat joined GMF following a 15 year public service career at the White House, State Department, and Treasury Department. Kifayat served as Secretary of State John Kerry’s acting special representative to Muslim communities, creating initiatives to broaden and deepen U.S. diplomatic engagement with Muslim communities worldwide. As senior advisor to the under secretary of state for public diplomacy and inaugural director of the Global Strategic Engagement Center (GSEC), he led initiatives to help advance to use of social media tools by the State Department. He developed and led initiatives at the Treasury Department to promote financial cooperation between the United States and key partners in the Middle East, G8, and Asia. He served as an alternate executive director of the African Development Bank Group, shaping bank activities that included the establishment of an anti-corruption unit. He served twice on the National Security Council staff coordinating counterterrorism and economic issues across the Middle East and Africa.

Prior to government service, Kifayat worked with Cargill on access strategies for Central Asian and Latin American agribusiness markets. He also designed programs for Delphi International to promote U.S. economic and civil society engagement around the world. 

Kifayat is an advisor to Public Affairs Engagement, a Washington, DC-based communications advisory firm and to the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue.  He serves on the board of advisers of the Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance (CSIF) at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, where he also leads the Future of Economic Power Task Force. He is an advisor to Harvard University’s Berkman Center Project on Countering Youth Online Hate Speech.  Kifayat co-chairs the U.S. Homeland Security Advisory Committee’s Countering Violent Extremism Subcommittee.