Headshot of Kim Ghattas

Kim Ghattas

Author of Black Wave and contributing writer for The Atlantic


Biography

Kim Ghattas is an Emmy-award winning journalist, analyst, and author with more than 20 years of experience covering the Middle East, international affairs, and US foreign policy for the BBC and other print and broadcast media. As a contributing writer for The Atlantic magazine and a regular contributor to the Financial Times, Ghattas builds on her experience and her continued access to decision makers in the region and in the United States to deliver incisive takeaways on current affairs.

Ghattas is the author of The Secretary, the New York Times best-seller about US foreign policy and her travels around the world with Hillary Rodham Clinton. She also wrote Black Wave, an analysis of the Saudi-Iran rivalry that was named a New York Times notable book in 2020 and has since become a reference for universities and diplomats. Ghattas is currently writing her third book, which revisits Lebanon’s civil war as the origin story of the US-Iran clash in the Middle East.

As a leading voice on Middle Eastern affairs, Ghattas shares her expertise on risk and opportunities in regional and geopolitical trends with a variety of key players and institutions in the region and in the United States. She serves on the board of trustees of the American University of Beirut and was chair of the board of directors for the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism network from 2020 to 2023. Ghattas is also a former nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2017–2022), a former public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2017) and a former Civitella Ranieri fellow (2019).