Clara Gillispie

Clara Gillispie is an Advisor to the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). She also serves as the official U.S. delegate to the Energy Research Institute Network, an East Asia Summit-linked network whose inputs are designed to inform the formal East Asia Summit process.

Ms. Gillispie’s subject-matter expertise covers topics ranging from technology policymaking to energy security to technology policymaking to geopolitical trends in the Asia-Pacific. She is the author of numerous policy essays and reports, including “South Korea’s 5G Ambitions” (2020), “U.S.-Australia Energy Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific” (2020), and “How Asia’s Auto Boom Shapes Its Energy Security Strategies” (co-authored with Laura Schwartz, 2019). Ms. Gillispie is regularly called on to directly brief her research and analysis to U.S. and Asian government officials, senior industry representatives, and the media, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and NPR’s Marketplace. Her current research at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy focuses on the country’s efforts to combat online misinformation about public health.

Previously, Ms. Gillispie served as a Senior Director for Trade, Economic, and Energy Affairs at NBR. She was also a 2021 Visiting International Fellow at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy, a 2020 International Visiting Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, a 2019-20 Council on Foreign Relations’ International Affairs Fellow at Carnegie India, and a 2017–18 SAFE Energy Security Fellow.

Earlier, Ms. Gillispie worked for the U.S. House Committee on Science, Technology, and Space; Detica Federal Inc. (now a part of BAE Systems); and the American Chamber of Commerce in China. Ms. Gillispie graduated from the London School of Economics and Peking University with a dual MSc in International Affairs. Prior to her graduate studies, she received a BS from Georgetown University and attended Sophia University in Tokyo for language training.