Colin Cookman is a program officer with the U.S. Institute of Peace's Center for South and Central Asia, working to help support, manage and coordinate research publications across the program's region of focus. He joined the staff in June 2014, after previously working on a part-time basis to support USIP research on Pakistan beginning in February 2013.

Cookman has previously worked as a contributing writer for the Economist Intelligence Unit's political risk and macroeconomic analyses of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and was a member of Democracy International's election observation mission during the 2010 Afghan parliamentary elections. From 2008 through 2013, Cookman worked as an analyst with the Center for American Progress' national security and international policy team, focusing on the internal political and conflict dynamics of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and American policy towards the region.

Cookman received his master's from John Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in 2014, with a concentration in South Asia studies and international economics, and his bachelor's in international relations from Boston University in 2005.