Derek Mitchell is a senior adviser to the President and Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C. Between 2018 and 2023, Ambassador Mitchell was president of the National Democratic Institute, a U.S.-based non-profit, non-government organization dedicated to supporting democratic development worldwide. From 2011-16, he served as U.S. special envoy and then ambassador to Burma (Myanmar), the first in 22 years, during a historic period in the country’s nascent democratic transition. From 2009-11, Ambassador Mitchell oversaw the Obama Administration Defense Department’s Asia policy as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs and acting Assistant Secretary. Mitchell had previously served at Defense as Special Assistant to the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Asian and Pacific Affairs during the Clinton Administration, and from 2001-2009 served as senior fellow for Asia in CSIS’s International Security Program, where he founded the Center’s Southeast Asia Program.
Ambassador Mitchell is currently Practitioner Fellow at Oxford University’s Centre for Democratic Resilience, Board member at the Institute for Indo-Pacific Security, and writing a book about Myanmar, entitled “Myanmar Days: A Chronicle of Diplomacy and Democracy,” to be published
by Columbia University Press.
