Rachel Rizzo is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center. Her research focuses on European security, NATO, and the transatlantic relationship.

Prior to joining the Atlantic Council, Rizzo served as the director of programs at the Truman Center for National Policy and the Truman National Security Project, where she managed a team of senior fellows and oversaw all Truman-branded publications, programming, and policy initiatives. From 2019-2020, she spent a year as a Robert Bosch fellow in Berlin, Germany, where she worked at the Berlin office of Human Rights Watch leading a research project on the EU’s dual-use surveillance-technology export policy and serving as an advisor to a member of the German Bundestag. Rizzo also spent over five years at the Center for a New American Security and has co-authored several of the center’s reports including More Than Burden Sharing: Five Objectives for the 2018 NATO Summit, Defining Moment: The Future of the Transatlantic Security Relationship, and Transatlantic Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific: Recommendations for the Next U.S. Administration. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Politico, Foreign Policy, Defense One, the National Interest, World Politics Review, and War on the Rocks. She is a frequent commentator on European security, and has provided analysis for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN, National Public Radio, LA Times, Atlantic, Politico, and Foreign Policy, among others. Rizzo received her MA in security policy studies from the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs where she focused on defense analysis and homeland-security policy. She graduated from the University of Utah with a BA in finance and began her career as a financial analyst with Goldman Sachs.