Nicole Cochran is a senior program specialist for the Southeast Asia team at USIP, where her work focuses on preventive diplomacy in the ASEAN Regional Forum.

Before joining the Asia Center in 2021, she worked with USIP’s governance, justice and security team researching elite manipulation of security sectors and provided research support to the Justice and Security Dialogue project. She is a former Thomas Jefferson Fellow at the National Center for State Courts and performed research on land law and land rights in Cambodia. Nicole holds a master’s degree in comparative law from McGill University, where she studied indigenous constitutionalism, as well as a law degree and master’s in public policy from William & Mary Law School.