CFR Welcomes Laura Taylor-Kale as Fellow for Innovation and Economic Competitiveness

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) welcomes Laura Taylor-Kale to its David Rockefeller Studies Program as a fellow for innovation and economic competitiveness, based in Washington, DC. At CFR, she will research and write on U.S. innovation policy, economic competitiveness, and related topics, and contribute to the work of the Renewing America initiative.

Taylor-Kale served as a CFR international affairs fellow from 2017 to 2018, when she was also deputy director of CFR’s Independent Task Force on the future of the U.S. workforce and co-author of the Task Force’s published report, The Work Ahead: Machines, Skills, and U.S. Leadership in the Twenty-First Century.

She previously served in the Barack Obama administration as the deputy assistant secretary for manufacturing in the International Trade Administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce from 2016 to 2017.

Prior to joining Commerce, she served as a senior advisor for policy and operations at the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. She joined the Obama administration from the World Bank, where she held positions as an advisor to the U.S. executive director and then to the vice president for sustainable development. From 2003 to 2012, she was a career Foreign Service officer in the U.S. Department of State serving in India, Cote d’Ivoire, Afghanistan, and at the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs in Washington, DC.

Taylor-Kale holds a BA in economics and anthropology from Smith College, an MPA from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, an MBA from the New York University Stern School of Business, and is a PhD candidate at Stanford University.