Anja Manuel is an affiliate at CISAC and is co-founder and Partner along with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in RiceHadleyGates LLC, a strategic consulting firm. 

The firm assists CEOs and senior executives at major companies – many of them headquartered in California -- to export, expand their businesses, and meet regulatory challenges in key emerging markets such as China, India, Latin America, and the Middle East.

Anja Manuel is also a Lecturer in the International Policy Studies Program at Stanford University where she designed and teaches a course on US Foreign Policy in Asia.

From 2005 to 2007, Anja Manuel served as Special Assistant to Under-Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns at the U.S. Department of State. In this role, Ms. Manuel had responsibility for South Asia Policy, Congressional outreach and legal matters. She was part of the negotiating team for the U.S.-India civilian nuclear accord, helped to secure passage of the accord in the U.S. Congress, and was extensively involved in developing U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan.

From 2001 to 2005, and from late 2007 to 2009, Ms. Manuel was an attorney at the law firm of WilmerHale, where she specialized in international litigation and arbitration, anti-corruption matters, and Congressional investigations, including in China, India, Latin America, and Africa. She helped represent Senators McCain and Feingold in their defense of the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act before the Supreme Court; and represented the German Economy Foundation Initiative in its efforts to set up a foundation to compensate forced labor victims of World War II.

Ms. Manuel started her career in the investment banking division of Salomon Brothers, working on German and Eastern European mergers and privatizations.

She graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, and holds a BA and MA degree with distinction from Stanford University.

Ms. Manuel serves on the Board of Advisors for Ripple, Inc. and Flexport, Inc., a California company working to simplify the export-import process in the United States.  She is also a Board Director for Internews, a non-profit that trains independent journalists in post-conflict and other developing countries.  She is an Advisory Board Member of the Center for a New American Security, the non-profit Developments in Literacy, and was a board director of Zipcourt, Inc. Ms. Manuel is a member of the Aspen India Strategy Group, and the Council on Foreign Relations.