Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook

Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook (born 1976) is a German-American political scientist. She was the director and CEO of the German Council on Foreign Relations from June 2021 to February 2022.^[1] Since August 2022 she has served as an Executive Vice President of the Bertelsmann Stiftung.^[2]

Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook
Born	1976 (age 48–49)
Education	Brown University London School of Economics Harvard Kennedy School
Organization	Bertelsmann Stiftung
Spouse	Tom Ashbrook ​ (m. 2017)​

Biography

Clüver Ashbrook grew up as the child of an American mother and a German-American father in Berlin and Wiesbaden. After graduating from Gutenbergschule Wiesbaden [de], she studied at Brown University, Rhode Island, USA and in Strasbourg, France. This was followed by a master's degree at the London School of Economics. From 2008 to 2010 she pursued a Master of Public Administration at the Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

She has been working there as a researcher since 2011, among others as co-founder and executive director of the Future of Diplomacy project, at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.^[3] She has been the leader of a research program on Europe and transatlantic relations since 2018.^[4]

She has also worked as a television journalist for CNN in Atlanta and London, at the strategy consultancy Roland Berger in France and China, and served on the Management Board of the Brussels-based think tank European Policy Centre (EPC).^[5]

She married the American journalist Tom Ashbrook in 2017.^[6]