Hunter Zhao, Foreign Service Officer, U.S. Department of State

Hunter Zhao is a political-track Foreign Service Officer currently in Vietnamese language training and Southeast Asian area studies at the Foreign Service Institute. Prior to joining the U.S. State Department, he was a senior graduate fellow in policy and advocacy at the Truman National Security Project. He provided additional support at Truman’s Afghanistan Operations Center. During 2019, Hunter served as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Malaysian Borneo. His previous work experiences include IOM Iraq, Human Rights Watch, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, and the High Court of Uganda. He also is a recipient of the Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Graduate Fellowship which allowed him to serve in U.S. Embassy Manila where he focused on political-military affairs, particularly the People’s Republic of China’s activities in the South China Sea. Hunter holds an M.A. in Human Rights Studies and a graduate certificate in African Studies from Columbia University. He is an alumnus of the International Fellows Program at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. He earned his B.A. in History and Sociology from the University of Michigan, where he also served as the president of First-Generation College Students at Michigan. He speaks Chinese, Vietnamese, and Spanish and occasionally performs and composes with singer songwriter, "Jessica in the Rainbow." 

Hunter Zhao