Drew Thompson is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University. He is also a part-time Senior Research Scientist at the CNA Corporation.
He was previously a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, where he taught graduate-level courses in US-China Relations and Practical Political Risk Analysis.
From 2011 to 2018, he was the Director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense where he was responsible for supporting the Secretary and managing military-to-military relations.
He was previously the Director of China Studies and Starr Senior Fellow at the Center for the National Interest in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining the Center, he was the National Director of the China-MSD HIV/AIDS Partnership in Beijing, a 5 year, $30 million HIV/AIDS program established by Merck & Co. and the Chinese Ministry of Health. Mr Thompson served previously as Assistant Director to the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He also was the president of a Washington, D.C. company that manufactured snack food in Qingdao, China. He lived in Shanghai from 1993 to 1998 where he was the General Manager of a U.S. freight forwarding and logistics firm, overseeing offices in Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing.
Mr Thompson studied Chinese language at Beijing University in 1990, and was a graduate student in 1992 at the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies in Nanjing, China. He graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Asian Studies from Hobart College in 1992, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 2004, Mr Thompson received an M.A. in Government, with a concentration in Homeland Security, from Johns Hopkins University.
Mr Thompson is widely published and has conducted live interviews for CNN, C-SPAN, Fox News, Bloomberg, the BBC, Channel NewsAsia, Voice of America, and CNBC Asia, and National Public Radio.
