Ryan Berg

Background

About Ryan Berg

I am a political scientist and currently the Director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). I am also an adjunct professor at the Catholic University of America and a course coordinator at the United States Foreign Service Institute. My research focuses on U.S-Latin America relations, strategic competition and defense policy, authoritarian regimes, armed conflict and transnational organized crime, and trade and development issues. Previously, I worked as research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where I helped lead its Latin America Studies Program, as well as visiting research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Changing Character of War Programme. I have been a Fulbright scholar in Brazil and had stints as a research consultant to the World Bank and a visiting doctoral fellow at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. I have lived and worked in Peru and Brazil and am a Council on Foreign Relations Term Member (2024-2029). My publications have appeared in a variety of peer-reviewed academic and policy-oriented journals, including The Lancet, Migration and Development, the SAIS Review of International Affairs, and the Georgetown Security Studies Review. In the popular press, my articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, CNN.com, Los Angeles Times, and World Politics Review, among other outlets. I routinely testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee. I obtained a Ph.D. and an M.Phil. in political science and an M.Sc. in global governance and diplomacy from the University of Oxford, where I was the Senior Hulme Fellow in Politics. Earlier, I obtained a B.A. in government and theology from Georgetown University. I am fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and conversational in Slovenian.