Commissioner Bio
Shamila Chaudhary
Shamila N. Chaudhary serves as the Democratic co-chair of the Afghanistan War Commission. Chaudhary worked for over a decade in the U.S. government, including at the White House as Director for Pakistan and Afghanistan on the National Security Council from 2010-2011. She also served in the U.S. Department of State’s policy planning staff as South Asia Advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the late Ambassador Richard Holbrooke from 2009-2010. Since leaving public service in 2011, Chaudhary has assumed a variety of leadership roles in higher education, think tank, non-profit, and private sectors, including at the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, American Pakistan Foundation, the Atlantic Council, and Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies where she served as Senior Advisor to Dean Vali Nasr from 2013-2019. Chaudhary earned an M.A. in International Affairs from the American University’s School of International Service and a B.A. in English Literature and Women’s Studies from the University of Toledo. She has been a proud resident of the District of Columbia since 1999.