Malou Innocent has been the chief of staff at Afina International since 2014 and an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute since 2013. For Afina, she develops, executes, and tracks all firmwide strategic planning activities and objectives to advance the firm and inform its practices. Before joining Afina, Innocent was a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute. Her subject-matter expertise includes U.S. national security, transnational terrorism, and Indo-Pacific Asia. With Ted Galen Carpenter, she is the author of two books, The Ties That Blind: How the U.S.-Saudi Alliance Damages Liberty and Security (Cato Institute: 2018) and Perilous Partners: The Benefits and Pitfalls of America’s Alliances with Authoritarian Regimes (Cato Institute, 2015).
Innocent’s work has been featured in a number of print and media outlets around the world, including Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Harvard International Review, PBS, C‑SPAN, CBS News, and BBC. Previously, she worked for California’s 13th District Office. Innocent serves on the board of directors of Citizen Diplomacy International, a nonprofit that connects the global community to the City of Philadelphia through international business, educational, and cultural delegations. She holds an advanced degree in international relations from the University of Chicago and a double major in communications and political science from the University of California at Berkeley.