Senior Program Advisor

Dr. Ellen Boccuzzi is a senior program advisor for The Asia Foundation. She is an expert on migration, labor, governance, and gender issues in the Asia-Pacific region.

Boccuzzi previously served as acting director for Governance and Law at The Asia Foundation, leading the Foundation’s Urban Governance Initiative. Prior to this, she served as a foreign service officer with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), where she managed USAID’s media development portfolio in Afghanistan and contributed to USAID strategies on human trafficking and on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance.

Boccuzzi has served as consultant to the International Labour Organization, UNESCO, and USAID; researcher with the Asian Research Center for Migration; and lead Bangkok researcher for a multi-country project on squatter resettlement. She has held academic appointments at the University of California, Berkeley and Thammasat University in Thailand. Her publications include Accelerating Women’s Advancement in STEM: Emerging Lessons on Network Strategies and Approaches in Asia, The Future of Work for Women in the Pacific Islands, The Impact of Covid-19 on Migrants in Asia and the Pacific: Rethinking Resilience, Migrant and Child Labor in Thailand’s Shrimp and Other Seafood Supply Chains: Labor Conditions and the Decision to Study or Work, and Bangkok Bound (University of Washington Press).

Education: Doctoral degree in South and Southeast Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley; master’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley; bachelor’s degree from Princeton University.