Anja Manuel

Principal, Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC
Anja Manuel
  • Helps business leaders understand emerging international markets
  • Advisor to Fortune 500 CEOs and Silicon Valley C-Suite executives
  • Frequent contributor to Fortune, Reuters, and The New York Times
  • Shares high-level insight on globalization, emerging markets, and America’s shifting role in international leadership

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Former diplomat, author, and advisor on foreign policy, Anja Manuel is Co-Founder and Principal along with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, a strategic consulting firm that helps US companies navigate international markets.  

Anja is the author of the critically acclaimed This Brave New World: India, China, and the United States, published by Simon and Schuster in 2016, and numerous articles and papers. 

She is the Executive Director of the Aspen Strategy Group and Aspen Security Forum, a premier bipartisan forum on foreign policy in the United States.  

From 2005 to 2007, she served as an official at the U.S. Department of State, as Special Assistant to the Undersecretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, responsible for Asia policy.    

Earlier in her career, Anja was an attorney at WilmerHale, working on Supreme Court and international cases and representing clients before the US Congress, Supreme Court, Department of Justice, Department of Defense, and the SEC.  She began her career as an investment banker at Salomon Brothers in London.   

A cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and Stanford University, Anja also lectured and was a research affiliate at Stanford University from 2009 to 2019, teaching courses on US Foreign Policy in Asia and Technology Policy.  

Anja is a frequent speaker on foreign policy and technology policy, is a commentator for TV and radio (NBC/MSNBC, Bloomberg News, Fox Business, BBC, NPR, etc.), and writes for publications ranging from the Washington Post, New York Times, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Fortune, and Newsweek, among others.  

Anja currently serves on the corporate board of Ripple Labs Inc., is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a Member of the Defense Policy Board for the U.S. Department of Defense.   

She has also served on advisory boards of Care.com, Center for a New American Security, Flexport Inc., Synapse Inc., and the boards of the Overseas Shipholding Group, Inc., National Committee on US-China Relations, American Ditchley Foundation, and formerly Governor Brown’s California Export Council. 

Anja lives in San Francisco with her husband and two children.

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Speaker Video

Anja Manuel: How To Win The Technology Race With China | TEDx PaloAlto

Anja Manuel: North Korea's Shadow Hangs Over Trump-Xi Meeting

Interview with Charlie Rose

Anja Manuel on BBC

Inside the New Superpowers

Conversation with David Miliband

Analysis of Events in Syria

World Affairs Forum

The Global Economy in the Complex World. From her front row seat as advisor to U.S. CEOs, Anja Manuel untangles the implications of recent events over the longer term for the world political system and economy, and the specific impact this may have on your business. She breaks down the avalanche of recent news into understandable realities. For example, 

  • the impact on U.S.-China relations and the consequences for US businesses who invest there or whose supply chains run through Asia; 
  • the cracks in the European Union, where reaction to recent events has been along nation-state lines in ways that may splinter regulatory regimes;
  • the future effectiveness international institutions;

Manuel draws on her first-hand expertise in every region of the world to provide answers at this uncertain time.

Navigating China’s Technological Rise: It’s Impact on Your Industry. In this charged political environment, Anja Manuel is able to cut through the rhetoric to offer an informed analysis of how the complex relationship between the U.S. and China may play out, and how the enmity between these giants could impact your industry specifically.  

As China becomes a technology superpower, Ms. Manuel unpacks what policies are contributing to China’s technological rise, whether and how worried western companies should be, how Western governments are reacting, and how recent developments, such as the Phase I trade agreement, are likely to affect future collaboration between the West and China.  

She explains, in simple and lucid terms, illustrated with up to date vignettes, how this great technological race is likely to affect your business.

How To Win the Technology Race with China. China systematically extracts the most advanced technology from the West. It does so legally, by mining open source databases, investing in our most advanced companies, and illegally, through cybertheft and spying. How we choose to react will define our future and that of the world.  Instead of closing our own system, we can and must compete, and in some cases, even cooperate. We need a new era of public-private collaboration that unites American society and our allies behind a common goal of global technological progress. This talk will show us how.

President Trump: The Future Of US Foreign Policy & America's Role In The World. Anja Manuel cuts through the rhetoric to offer an informed analysis of how President Trump’s policies might affect the United States’ relationships with foreign allies and enemies alike. Drawing on years of experience working at the State Department and as an international business consultant with the esteemed firm of RiceHadleyGates, LLC, Anja breaks down the sometimes inflammatory foreign policy and trade pronouncements into thoughtful and understandable realities. Her expertise spans the breadth of the regions what they mean for US foreign policy—from the likely direction of US trade policy, to relations China and India, to what the instability of the Middle East and Russia’s assertive policies might mean for the US businesses in the near term. Anja’s rational and measured approach to the issues has established her as an informed resource for audiences around the world.

Female Leadership. As an investment banker, lawyer, government official and now business owner in Silicon Valley, Anja Manuel has experienced firsthand both the challenges and inspiring change afoot globally for women. Drawing on global examples as well as her own decisions and sometimes funny mistakes, she shares her perspectives on women in the seat of power, and adds common-sense solutions to empower women around the world to reach their full potential.

Doing Business in Emerging Markets. Every day, American businesses must decide where in the world to sell, invest or source parts of their supply chain. How do you determine which emerging markets to enter first? And how do you do it both effectively and ethically? Based on her extensive experience in government and now leading businesses through these difficult decisions, Anja Manuel shares her insight and illuminating stories about how to engage local governments and business partners from Bogota to Bangalore.

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booksLatest Books

This Brave New World: India, China and the United States

This Brave New World: India, China and the United States