As the Director of Policy Planning Staff for the U.S. Department of State, Salman Ahmed will be in charge of the department’s internal think tank, the Policy Planning Staff. Before his appointment, Ahmed was most recently a nonresident senior fellow for the Geoeconomics and Strategy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where his research focused on the impacts of U.S. foreign policy on the American middle class. He is expected to work closely with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who both jointly contributed research to the bipartisan taskforce Ahmed led on Making U.S. Foreign Policy Work Better for the Middle Class.

Ahmed began his career working in peacekeeping efforts with the United Nations for nearly 15 years before working within the US government where he served in field missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, and South Africa. His role there would culminate by being named chief of staff for the Head of UN Peacekeeping Operations before he began working for the U.S. government. Ahmed was a member of the National Security Council, serving as special assistant to the president and senior director for strategic planning during the second Obama administration. Ahmed also has a past working relationship with then-Secretary of State John Kerry, supporting U.S. negotiations with Russia on Syria between 2013 and 2016.