Anka Lee
Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asian Affairs
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Anka Lee serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs within the Office of the Secretary of Defense. She is responsible for advising senior Department of Defense leaders on all policy matters related to the development and implementation of defense strategy, plans, policies, and bilateral security relationships in the East Asia region (Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, and North Korea).
Prior to joining the Department of Defense, Lee served as Deputy Assistant Administrator for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), where she oversaw multilateral relations and development cooperation. During her first two years at USAID, she also served as Senior Advisor for China, where she led and coordinated the agency's global strategy and efforts on China. Prior to joining the Biden-Harris Administration, Lee served as Global Policy Manager at WhatsApp.
From 2017 to 2020, Lee served as the California Assembly's Director of International Relations, where she led the Assembly's engagement with foreign leaders and advised Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon on international issues relevant to California. She also launched new bilateral initiatives with the governments of Mexico, Canada, Japan and Germany to enable the state's elected officials to work on common policy issues with their foreign counterparts.
His work in international affairs includes serving as Senior Director of China at the Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy firm led by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former National Security Advisor Samuel Berger, as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. military studying security trends in the Asia-Pacific region, as a congressional staffer advising lawmakers on human rights and rule of law issues in China, and as a journalist covering democratization movements and politics in Asia. Prior to his work in foreign affairs, Lee was a political reporter in California and a legislative aide in the California Assembly.
His writing and on-air commentary have appeared in The Atlantic, Bloomberg, The Diplomat, Just Security, Foreign Policy, NBC News, POLITICO, Time, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is a fellow and former co-leader of the Truman Project's Asia Experts Group. A member of the first generation to graduate from college, Lee holds a BA in American Politics from the University of California, Berkeley and a MA in East Asian Studies from Harvard University.
