Zachary M. Hosford is the acting director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. In this capacity, he helps oversee both the program’s research agenda, as well as its high-level convening, which includes multiple trilateral dialogues that bring together senior American, Asian, and European experts and officials to address key foreign policy and security issues.

Previously, he was the Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts), the Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy. In this position, he led the Senator’s foreign policy and defense work, including through legislation, hearings, speeches, and Executive Branch oversight.

Prior to that, he was the Senior Advisor for Asia-Pacific Strategy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs at the Department of Defense (DoD). In this role, Hosford helped develop an integrated approach to the region, as well as craft strategic messaging for the Secretary of Defense and other senior officials. He also was the lead author of DoD’s first-ever Asia-Pacific Maritime Security Strategy and assisted in creating and institutionalizing the Southeast Asia Maritime Security Initiative, a DoD-led partner capacity-building program. For his work on these issues, he was awarded the OSD Medal for Exceptional Public Service.

Before serving in government, Hosford was a Fellow in the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), where he conducted research and published on a wide variety of issues, including North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, U.S. alliances with Japan and South Korea, China’s national security strategy, and maritime security in the East and South China Seas. He also was awarded with the Bacevich Fellow position, established in honor of 1LT Andrew J. Bacevich, Jr., USA, and served as the Director of the Next Generation National Security Leaders Program. 

Hosford earned his MA in Security Studies from Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in Washington, DC. He received his BA from Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he majored in Scientific and Philosophical Studies of the Mind and minored in Astronomy.