Lee Anna Tucker is a senior program officer for Middle East programs. She joined USIP after four years with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO). As CSO’s team lead for Levant and Iraq, she oversaw the bureau’s first Iraq programs focused on analysis of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces. Previously, as team lead for the Maghreb and Egypt, she oversaw a $10 million programming portfolio and led assessments on topics such as countering violent extremism, preventing electoral violence, and conflict economies in Libya and Tunisia.

Tucker is an attorney and the former documentation policy & analysis lead at the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre, a Syrian-led nonprofit organization that collects and preserves documentation of violations of human rights, humanitarian, and international criminal law in Syria to facilitate transitional justice and accountability efforts. Tucker also worked with the Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG), where she provided legal and policy guidance on cease-fires, peace negotiations, and post-conflict governance to governments and nonstate entities in Syria, Libya, Egypt, and Yemen, among others. Tucker managed PILPG’s first Syria project in the field, which brought together Syrian community leaders to address intercommunal conflict through dialogue and policy advocacy on minority protections, transitional justice, and cease-fire design. Tucker has a Juris Doctorate and a master’s degree in international affairs from American University, and a bachelor’s degree in international area studies and Middle East studies from the University of Oklahoma.

Currently, Tucker is interested in the intersection of security sector reform (SSR) and disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) in the context of nonstate and hybrid local armed groups; in addressing the generational challenge of ISIS-associated internally displaced persons by linking lessons from disengagement from violent extremism, DDR, and community dialogue; and in practical applications of the Stabilization Assistance Review for peacebuilding practitioners.