Photo Credit: Bret Hartman/TED

 Full CV

Originally from Italy, Benedetta Berti is  a policy adviser and consultant.

​An Eisenhower Global Fellow and a TED Senior Fellow, Benedetta is also Associate Researcher at the Institute for European Studies at Vrije Universiteit Brussels and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. In the past, she has held positions at West Point, the Institute for National Security Studies and Tel Aviv University, among others.  Since 2018, Benedetta serves as Head of Policy Planning in the Office of the Secretary General at NATO.

In the past decade, Benedetta has worked in NGOs and research institutes in Latin America, the Middle East, and the US, focusing on human rights, internal conflict, and political violence.  Her areas of expertise include human security, internal conflict, integration of armed groups, post-conflict stabilization and peace-building, as well as violence prevention and reduction and crisis management and prevention. 

Her work has appeared, among others, on Al-Arabiya, the Daily Beast, the Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the National Interest, and Open Democracy as well as in academic journals including Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, the Middle East Journal, ORBIS, Democratization, Civil Wars and Mediterranean Politics. Recently, Dr. Berti authored Armed Political Organizations: From Conflict to Integration (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013) and edited with Kristina Mikulová and Nicu Popescu of Democratization in EU Foreign Policy: New Member States as Drivers of Democracy Promotion (Routledge, 2015). 

Benedetta is a frequent news commentator on international security,  foreign policy, Middle Eastern politics and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Her comments and interviews have been featured in a number of prominent news outlets, including The New York Times, Time Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, Bloomberg, Reuters and al-Jazeera. She is also a frequent guest lecturer and public speaker.

Her work and research have been awarded numerous awards, grants and fellowships, including the World Politics and Statecraft Fellowship, the Horowitz Foundation Grant, the Lady Davis Fellowship, the Bradley Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, the Morris Abrams Award in International Relations, the Rosenthal Fellowship and the International Center for Non-Violent Conflict Curriculum Fellowship.

She is a Young Atlanticist Fellow, a Körber Foundation’s Munich Young Leader, a German Marshall Fund of the United States Young Strategist, an Eisenhower Global Fellow, as well as a member of the Asian Forum on Global Governance, the Global Young Academy and the UN Alliance of Civilizations "Global Experts.” In 2015 the Italian government awarded her the Order of the Star of Italy (order of Knighthood) and in 2016 she was appointed as a member of the "Commission on the study of Radicalization" established by the government of Italy.

Benedetta holds a BA in Oriental Studies from the University of Bologna, an MA and PhD in International Relations from the Fletcher School (Tufts University), and two post-doctorates in International Relations and Political Science.