Lauren Barney
Vice President
Lauren Barney is a Vice President at American Global Strategies, where she supports the firm’s International Business Strategy and Economic Security & Energy practices and advises clients on regional strategy, geopolitical and supply chain risks, government engagement, development finance, and market dynamics. She works with clients to assess geopolitical and supply chain risks and navigate government engagement.
Prior to joining American Global Strategies, Lauren served at the U.S. Department of State’s Office of China Affairs (China House), advising on Sino-Global South relations, and in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, advising on critical minerals, the digital economy, tariffs, international trade, development finance, and Indo-Pacific cooperation.
Lauren’s experience includes work on these issues across government, research, and industry. She was a Research Associate at the Institute for Defense Analyses, where she focused on national security topics, and a Chinese analyst at SOSi Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis. She also worked on the U.S.-China bilateral commercial relationship at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration.
Lauren earned a master’s degree in Conflict Management from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), a graduate certificate in Chinese Studies from the Hopkins Nanjing Center, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh. She is proficient in Mandarin, Persian (Farsi), and Hebrew.
Lauren is a 2023 Foundation for Defense of Democracies National Security Fellow, a 2020 energy security fellow at Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE), and a 2021–2022 Alexander Hamilton Society Security and Strategy Seminar Fellow.
