Allison Minor

Allison Minor is a visiting fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution. She is joining Brookings as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. Her research focuses on improving the alignment between foreign policy and foreign assistance to prevent conflict.

Minor has worked at the nexus of foreign policy and foreign assistance at a range of U.S. government agencies, with a focus on fragile and conflict-affected countries. She most recently served as the deputy special envoy for Yemen at the U.S. Department of State. In that role, she worked closely with the U.N. special envoy team to secure the longest truce since the Yemen conflict began, paving the way for dialogue on a comprehensive peace process.

Minor previously worked at the U.S. National Security Council, U.S. Agency for International Development, and U.S. Development Finance Corporation. In these roles, she led strategy development on a range of issues, including integrated U.S. government strategies for Yemen and Oman; multimillion dollar foreign assistance initiatives in Iraq, Morocco, and Yemen; and an investment approach for fragile states. In these roles, she championed new approaches to leveraging development assistance and other tools to prevent and respond to conflict, including by designing innovative scenario-based planning approaches to guide development assistance in dynamic conflict settings and establishing processes to improve coordination both with policymakers and across humanitarian and development actors.

Prior to her career in government, Minor worked with the United Nations and in the NGO sector, with a focus on international development and social protection. Allison has a master’s degree in Global Policy Studies and a master’s degree in Middle East Studies from the University of Texas-Austin.