The Outlook

Amb. Frank Lavin joins Victor Lago '26 and Anika Mukker '26 on The Outlook.

Frank Lavin served as Under Secretary for International Trade at the U.S. Department of Commerce in the George H.W. Bush administration. In that capacity, Lavin served as lead trade negotiator for both China and India and was responsible for commercial policy, export promotion, and trade negotiations across the globe. Lavin was previously U.S. ambassador to Singapore, where he helped negotiate the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement. 

Lavin is active in U.S.-Asia policy, U.S. domestic politics, and trade policy matters. He serves as a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution as well as a Trustee of the Asia Foundation and as a Director of the Asia Society of Northern California. 

In the private sector, Lavin served in senior finance and management positions in Hong Kong and Singapore with Edelman, Bank of America, and Citibank. Lavin also served in the George W. Bush and Reagan Administrations, working in the Department of Commerce, Department of State, National Security Council, and White House. In the Reagan Administration, Lavin served as White House Political Director. 

He is a columnist for Forbes.com and has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and elsewhere. Lavin is also the author of Inside the Reagan White House, The Smart Business Guide to China E-Commerce, co-author of Export Now, and author of Home Front to Battlefront, a World War II history book. 

Lavin is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves on the Advisory Board of ECIPE, a Brussels-based think tank. Lavin has participated in two humanitarian missions to Ukraine. He formerly served as a Lt Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserves. Lavin earned a BS from the School of Foreign Service; an M.S. in Chinese Language and History from Georgetown University; an M.A. in International Relations and International Economics from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies; and an M.B.A. in Finance from the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania. 

Professor Lind is an Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth and the author of the new book, Autocracy 2.0: How China’s Rise Reinvented Tyranny. It argues that China has risen to become a superpower and technological leader – which defies the expectations of an influential school of economic thought that holds that liberal institutions are essential for innovation. Lind’s first book was Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics, which examines the effect of war memory on international reconciliation. She has authored scholarly articles in International Security and International Studies Quarterly, and writes for wider audiences in outlets such as Foreign Affairs and National Interest. Lind is also editor in chief of Blue Blaze, a multi-author Substack focusing on international relations and US foreign policy.  Professor Lind is affiliated with the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard, as well as Chatham House, London. In recent years she has been a visiting scholar at Waseda University, Japan, and at the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Lind has worked as a consultant for RAND and for the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense. 

Robert Malley is a lecturer and Senior Fellow at the Yale Jackson School and the author, with Hussein Agha, of Tomorrow is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine. He served as Special Envoy for Iran from January 2021 to April 2023. Prior to that, he was president and CEO of the International Crisis Group. Under President Barack Obama, he served as Special Assistant to the President, Senior Advisor to the President for the Counter-ISIL campaign, and White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and Gulf Region in 2015-2016 and, before that, as Senior Director for the Gulf Region and Syria.   Before joining the National Security Council staff in February 2014, Malley founded and directed the International Crisis Group's Middle East and North Africa Program from January 2002. Prior to that, he was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.  Until January 2001, Malley was Special Assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs and Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council. Mr. Malley first joined the National Security Council staff in August 1994 as Director for Democracy. In July 1997, he became Executive Assistant to the National Security Advisor from July 1997 to September 1998, acting as an informal chief of staff for Samuel R. Berger.   Malley served as a law clerk to Justice Byron R. White of the United States Supreme Court in 1991-1992.  Malley is a graduate of Yale University, Harvard Law School and Oxford University, England, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He is the author of The Call from Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution and the Turn to Islam, and of articles published in the New York Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Le Monde, and several other publications.  

Mark Brzezinski has a distinguished career in public service and the private sector. He currently is President and CEO of Brzezinski Global Strategies, a boutique strategic consulting firm. Mark served as U.S. Ambassador to Poland from 2021-2024. During the Obama Administration, Mark served as the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden between 2011-2015. During his tenure as Ambassador, U.S. commercial diplomacy efforts in the Nordic region were consolidated in the U.S. Embassy in Sweden. Mark arranged the first-ever U.S. Presidential visit to Stockholm in 2013, which brought together all five heads of governments of the Nordic countries for a summit that galvanized a U.S.-Nordic strategic approach on energy, innovation and sustainability. For his service, Mark was awarded the Royal Order of the Polar Star by the King of Sweden, a high honor rarely bestowed on a foreign ambassador. From 1999 to 2001, Mark served on President Clinton's National Security Council staff, first as a Director for Russia and Eurasia, and then as a Director for the Balkans. 

Dr. S. Vasu Vaitla is an international security scholar and practitioner with twenty-five years of experience across the U.S. Department of State, the United Nations, the U.S. Air Force, and Initiatives of Change (an international peacebuilding NGO.) He currently teaches security studies at Georgetown University. Most recently, Dr. Vaitla led strategic analysis on South Asia and the Indian Ocean region as a senior foreign affairs and intelligence analyst at the U.S. Department of State, contributing to the President’s Daily Brief and briefing Cabinet officials and Members of Congress. He also received multiple departmental honors in previous roles for formulating US policy in the UN Security Council to counter foreign terrorist fighters, advancing global efforts to prevent radicalization to violence, and strengthening multilateral sanctions.

Ambassador Frank Lavin served as Under Secretary for International Trade (2005-2007), acting as lead trade negotiator for China and India and overseeing global commercial policy, export promotion, and trade talks. Previously, he was U.S. Ambassador to Singapore (2001-2005), where he helped negotiate the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement. He has held senior finance and management roles in Hong Kong and Singapore with Bank of America and Citibank and earlier served in the Reagan and Bush (41) Administrations, including as White House Political Director. Ambassador Lavin is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Southern California, Hoover Institution Visiting Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations member, Forbes columnist, and author of several books, including his most recent Inside the Reagan White House. He holds a B.S. and M.S. from Georgetown, an M.A. from Johns Hopkins SAIS, and an M.B.A. from Wharton, and served as a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Naval Reserves. 

Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he specializes in Iran, Turkey, and the broader Middle East. A former Pentagon official, Dr. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, and both pre- and postwar Iraq. He also spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. For more than a decade, he taught classes at sea about the Horn of Africa and Middle East conflicts, culture, and terrorism, to deployed US Navy and Marine units.   Dr. Rubin is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of several books exploring diplomacy, Iranian history, Arab culture, Kurdish studies, and Shi'ite politics, including "Seven Pillars: What Really Causes Instability in the Middle East?" (AEI Press, 2019); "Kurdistan Rising" (AEI Press, 2016); "Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes" (Encounter Books, 2014); and "Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos" (Palgrave, 2005).   Dr. Rubin has a PhD and an MA in history from Yale University, where he also obtained a BS in biology.  

Anika Mukker ‘26; Daphna Fineberg ‘26; Victor Lago ‘26; and Sophia Sahni ‘28 sit down for a conversation with Geeta Anand. 

Geeta Anand ‘89 is editor-in-chief of VTDigger. A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, author and former university dean, Anand brings nearly 30 years of experience in investigative and public service journalism to the role. Anand served as dean of the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and worked as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, reporting from India on a range of international issues. Anand began her career in Vermont, covering southern Vermont and Rutland for The Rutland Herald, where her reporting on credit reporting errors led to congressional action. She later covered City Hall for The Boston Globe and is the author of “The Cure,” a book about a family’s search for medical answers that was adapted into the film “Extraordinary Measures,” starring Harrison Ford

Victor Lago ‘26, Madeline Shaw '25, and Sophia Sahni ‘28 sit down for a conversation with Mona El Naggar.

Mona El-Naggar is an international correspondent and documentary filmmaker with twenty years of experience producing and driving award-winning work for the New York Times. She is an expert in Middle East politics, religion, women, youth, and culture, and has reported in nearly every country in the Arab world. Based in Cairo, she authors stories that cover gender issues, war and conflict, and the changing political and social dynamics shaping everyday life. El-Naggar holds a BA in Political Economy from Georgetown University and a MA in News and Documentary from New York University. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for international reporting, an Emmy Nominee for news and documentary, and the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) Best of Photojournalism Award.

Victor Lago ‘26, Sophia Sahni ‘28, Alex Rockmore ‘27, Hannah McGee ‘27, Amber Pascovici ‘29, and Victoria Webb ‘29 sit down for a conversation with Nicholas Opiyo.

Nicholas Opiyo is the Senior Director for Human Rights at the African Middle Eastern Leadership Project, and a Frontline Fellow with the Renew Democracy Initiative. He is an award-winning human rights attorney and democracy and justice advocate from Uganda, where he founded a civil rights charity and was targeted and attacked for his work. Nicholas has fought for electoral security, free speech, free press, and LGBTQ rights in Uganda.