Lisa Curtis


Lisa Curtis is deputy assistant to U.S. president Donald Trump, and Senior Director for South and Central Asia on the National Security Council. She was appointed to the NSC in 2017 by H.R. Macmaster. Prior to her appointment to the NSC, she was a Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
Curtis was a staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee handling the South Asia portfolio for then Committee Chairman Senator Richard Lugar. From 2001 to 2003 was a senior adviser in South Asia Bureau at the U.S. State Department where she advised the Assistant Secretary of State on India-Pakistan relations. In the late 1990s she was a political analyst on South Asia in the Central Intelligence Agency. She has also served as a political officer in the U.S. embassies in Islamabad and New Delhi during the Clinton Administration.
Curtis has a bachelor's degree in economics from Indiana University. She resides in Herndon, Virginia with her husband and two children.

Pakistan Working Group

Curtis' research has covered the US-India strategic and defence partnership, US counterterrorism policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and trends in extremism and religious freedom throughout the region. She coauthored a Pakistan Working Group report with former Pakistani ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani and various experts in 2008. The report praised achievements in Operation Zarb-i-Azb, called for pressure on Pakistan to work with the U.S. on Afghanistan and terrorism, encouraged Pakistan to break ties with the Taliban and other terrorist groups based in Afghanistan such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba, and called for curtailing assistance to Pakistan's military if it assists groups that kill Americans, including US troops in Afghanistan or American visitors in India. The report recommended revoking Pakistan’s status as a major non-Nato ally in six months if Pakistan's army did not reform and called for consideration of the option to declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism if Islamabad does not change its policies, detailing what changes were required.