Jaime Stansbury is a nonresident fellow at the empowerME initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East programs. She is also vice president with The Cohen Group, leading the firm’s Middle East practice. She advises US and multinational companies on geopolitics and policies that drive business decisions across various industries including energy, healthcare, law, technology,
defense, mining, and water.

Trained as a management consultant, Stansbury spent over fifteen years living and working in the Middle East. In 2010, she stood up a bilateral government program for the United States and Saudi Arabia to protect critical infrastructure vital to the global economy. She advised a start-up think tank at a private university and consulted with a global nonprofit to launch scholarship programs for Saudi women and men to study art, culture, and music for the first time in the nation’s history.

After serving on the founding board of directors of the American Chamber of Commerce in Saudi Arabia, Stansbury became its first executive director in 2020. Under her leadership, the organization transformed from an informal business network into a professional nonprofit serving over two hundred companies across its three chapters. As the founder of the first international women’s business group in Saudi Arabia, she advanced women’s leadership and inclusion during a time of unprecedented societal change.

A first-generation college graduate, Stansbury is passionate about fostering international exchange opportunities for nontraditional students. She holds a master’s degree in business administration from Indiana University and in Arab studies from Georgetown University. She also studied Arabic in Jordan and Yemen.

Stansbury writes on economics, gender, culture, development, and foreign policy in the Arab Gulf and recently authored a children’s book about her family’s visits to cultural heritage sites across Saudi Arabia, published by the Institute of International Education.