Joshua Walker

Dr. Joshua W. Walker (@drjwalk) is a perpetual bridge-building policymaker, trained as an academic and passionate about global affairs with a specialization in the Middle East and East Asia. He currently serves as a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and he teaches the Politics of National Security at the George Washington University’s Elliot Graduate School of International Affairs and Leadership and the American Presidency at the George Mason University. Dr. Walker also serves as the Vice President of Global Programs at APCO Worldwide, a leading strategic communications firm based in Washington. There, he is the chief global strategist and oversees APCO’s 34 international offices for the Founding Chairman and CEO, most recently setting up the organization’s newest office in Tokyo, Japan and expanding its reach from Istanbul, Turkey into Eurasia. Before joining the private sector, Dr. Walker worked at the U.S. Department of State three different times, most recently as a senior advisor to Secretaries Kerry and Clinton. Dr. Walker is a 2016 Presidential Leadership Scholar who is passionate about furthering international affairs and the next generation of foreign policy leadership through his service on half-a-dozen national boards including on the Executive Committee of the American Turkish Council, Sister Cities International and Young Professionals in Foreign Policy. He speaks Japanese as a result of growing up in the northernmost island of Hokkaido with his parents, Turkish having lived in Ankara as a Fulbright scholar and subsequently worked in Turkey, and Virginian English given his family’s Richmond roots and his current residence in Alexandria.