Sarah Yerkes is a senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research focuses on democracy and governance, U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East and North Africa, and political and economic reform in Tunisia.

She is the editor of Geopolitics and Governance in North Africa (Edinburgh University Press, 2023) and the author of a forthcoming book examining the role of external actors in influencing the first decade of democratic transition around the globe.

Yerkes has been a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellow and has taught in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University.

She is a former member of the State Department’s policy planning staff, where she focused on North Africa. Previously, she was a foreign affairs officer in the State’s Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian affairs. Yerkes also served as a geopolitical research analyst for the U.S. military’s Joint Staff Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate (J5) at the Pentagon, advising the Joint Staff leadership on foreign policy and national security issues.