Benjamin Zawacki has been a senior program specialist at The Asia Foundation since March 2020, following several years in a consultancy role. He helps manage programs on regional maritime and cyber security, ASEAN, the Mekong River, and the US-Thailand relationship.
Zawacki is the author of Thailand: Shifting Ground Between the US and a Rising China (Bloomsbury), which was translated into Chinese and whose second edition was released in December 2021. He was a term member on the Council on Foreign Relations through 2016 and a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program in 2014-2015. He served as a policy advisor to President Jimmy Carter and two other members of the Elders in Myanmar in 2013 and was Amnesty International’s Southeast Asia researcher for five years through 2012. He has also worked for several UN agencies. A regular contributor to the media in Southeast Asia, he has published over 50 articles, reports, and opinion editorials. He is a member of the New York State Bar and a graduate of the George Washington University Law School and the College of the Holy Cross. He has lived in Thailand for 19 years.
Education: The George Washington University Law School and the College of the Holy Cross.
