Expert Bio

Anka Lee is a Distinguished Fellow at the Wilson Center. 

He is a Partner at Scalare Advisors, a strategic consulting firm. He is a national security expert who has served in senior leadership roles in government. Most recently, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia at the Pentagon, where he advanced bilateral defense relations with major allies and partners in the region and pursued collective action to meet growing security challenges in the Indo-Pacific. Prior to that, as USAID Deputy Assistant Administrator, he rallied like-minded countries to surge financial support for pressing global issues – from addressing Ukraine’s security needs to alleviating hunger to coordinating responses to China’s corrosive development practices globally. In between his stints in public service, Anka was a global policy manager at WhatsApp and a consultant to Fortune 500 companies. 

From 2017–2020, Anka returned home to California and reimagined the international affairs director role at the California State Assembly, serving as chief adviser to Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon on global issues relevant to California. He created new bilateral initiatives with the governments of Mexico, Canada, Japan, and Germany, empowering state elected officials to address shared policy challenges with foreign counterparts – from climate to cross-border water pollution to data privacy. Earlier in his career, Anka was a news producer at KTVU-TV Fox 2 in Oakland covering national, state, and local campaigns and served as an aide at the California State Senate. While in high school, he led a four-year campaign that convinced voters to approve a $40 million bond to renovate public schools in the West Contra Costa School District. 

He has written for and appeared on The Atlantic, Bloomberg, The Diplomat, Just Security, Foreign Policy, NBC, Newsweek, POLITICO, Time, and San Francisco Chronicle. Born in Hong Kong, raised in California, and a first-generation college graduate, Anka received his B.A. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and M.A. in East Asian studies from Harvard University. He also did graduate studies at the California State University, Sacramento, as part of the California Senate Fellows Program.