Christopher Smart

Christopher Smart is no longer with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Christopher Smart was a nonresident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on the interaction of global financial markets and international economic policy. As an investor and policymaker, Smart has spent the past three decades engaged in key issues of global economic affairs and foreign policy from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the European financial crisis to the 21st century challenges around global data flows. Currently, Smart is the head of macroeconomics and geopolitical research at Barings. 

From 2013 to 2015 he was the special assistant to the president at the National Economic Council and the National Security Council, where he was a principal adviser to President Obama on trade, investment, and a wide range of global economic issues. Prior to that, he spent four years as deputy assistant secretary of the treasury, where he led the Obama administration’s response to the euro crisis and designed U.S. engagement on financial policy across Europe, Russia, and Central Asia.

Before entering government, Smart was director of international investments at Pioneer Investments where he managed top-performing emerging markets and international portfolios. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, he worked in Moscow, advising Russian government agencies on economic policy and financial market reform. Earlier in his career, he was a journalist in St. Petersburg, Florida and Paris, France.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.