Jesse Marks is the CEO and Managing Director of Rihla Research & Advisory LLC, a Washington, DC–based firm focused on the intersection of the Middle East and China. From 2020 to 2022, he was a Middle East policy advisor in the U.S. Department of Defense, serving under both the Trump and Biden administrations. He previously served as a nonresident fellow at the Stimson Center’s China, a Fulbright Fellow at the Jordan Center for Strategic Studies, a Scoville Fellow with the Stimson Center’s Protecting Civilians in Conflict program, and a Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He holds a Master’s in Global Affairs from Tsinghua University and an MPhil in International Relations and Politics from the University of Cambridge.
