Amy Hawthorne is POMED’s Deputy Director for Research. She is a Middle East expert with extensive policy, analytical, and practical experience on Arab political reform and democracy promotion. Prior to joining POMED in October 2015, Amy served as Resident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, where she focused on U.S. policy toward Egypt and U.S. and European strategies to support political and economic reform in the post-2011 Arab world, with a concentration on Tunisia. Before joining the Atlantic Council in April 2013, Amy was an appointee at the U.S. Department of State for two years, where she helped to coordinate U.S. support for Egypt’s transition and advised on the U.S. response to the Arab Spring. Amy previously served as founding executive director of the Hollings Center for International Dialogue, a nongovernmental organization operating in Washington and Istanbul that promotes mutual understanding between the United States and predominantly Muslim countries. She was also an Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she was the Founding Editor of the Arab Reform Bulletin (now Sada) and analyzed political reform in the Arab world. At the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, Hawthorne was Senior Program Officer for the Middle East, managing democracy programs across the Arab world. She has published a number of widely read analyses on U.S. policy and democracy promotion in the Arab world and frequently is quoted in the media. Amy graduated with honors in history from Yale University, with a focus on the Middle East, and obtained her MA in modern Middle Eastern studies at the University of Michigan, where she concentrated on Islamic law. She has advanced skills in Arabic and has lived and traveled extensively throughout the Arab world (especially Egypt) as well as in Turkey.