Allison Hooker is a foreign policy and national security specialist with 20 years of experience in the U.S. Government working on Asia. Allison served for more than six years on the National Security Council staff, including as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Asia, where she led the coordination and implementation of U.S. policy toward the Indo-Pacific region, and coordinated policy approaches with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific and Europe. Prior to that, Allison served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for the Korean Peninsula, where she focused on U.S. policy toward the Koreas, and staffed the President for all engagements with North and South Korea, including the U.S.-DPRK Summits in Singapore, Hanoi, and the DMZ. Prior to her service at the White House, Allison was a senior analyst for North Korea in the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research from 2001 to 2014. In that role, she staffed the Six-Party Talks on North Korea’s nuclear program and provided analytical support to U.S. negotiators. Allison received a Masters’ of Arts Degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and Public Administration from Georgia College and State University.

Dr. Katrin Fraser Katz, is The Korea Society's inaugural Van Fleet Nonresident Senior Fellow. Dr. Katz is a former director for Japan, Korea, and oceanic affairs on the staff of the National Security Council, where she served from 2007 to 2008. Previously, she was a special assistant to the assistant secretary for international organization affairs at the U.S. Department of State and an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. She currently also serves as an Adjunct Fellow (Non-resident) in the Office of the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC. She was previously an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University and has also taught at Georgetown University. In 2017, Dr. Katz received the inaugural Sherman Family Korea Emerging Scholar Lecture Series award from The Korea Society. Dr. Katz’s research, which has been supported by grants from the Korea Foundation and the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, explores the interplay of cooperation and conflict in East Asia’s political, economic, and security dynamics. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from Northwestern University; a master’s degree in East Asian and international security studies from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where she was awarded the John C. Perry Scholarship for East Asian Studies; and a bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, in international relations and Japanese from the University of Pennsylvania.

Ambassador (ret.) Kathleen Stephens is a former American diplomat. She was U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea 2008-2011. She is currently Board Chair of The Korea Society and President & CEO of the Korea Economic Institute. Korea has been a leitmotif of Ambassador Stephens’ life and career since she served in rural Korea as a Peace Corps volunteer and trainer, 1975-1977. She was in Korea 1983-1989, first as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul reporting on Korea’s domestic political and human rights scene, and later leading the U.S. Consulate in Busan. Other overseas assignments included postings to China, former Yugoslavia, Portugal, Northern Ireland, where she was U.S. Consul General in Belfast during the negotiations culminating in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and India, where she was U.S. Charge ‘d Affaires (2014-2015). Ambassador Stephens also served in a number of policy positions in Washington at the Department of State and the White House. These included acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (2012), Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (2005-2007), Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (2003-2005), and National Security Council Director for European Affairs at the Clinton White House. Stephens was William J. Perry Fellow for Korea at Stanford University 2015-2018. She is a Mansfield Foundation Distinguished Fellow, Pacific Century Institute board chairman, vice-chair of the board of trustees for The Asia Foundation, and board chair of The Korea Society. She has been President and CEO of the Korea Economic Institute of America since September 2018, based in Washington, DC.