Dr. Ellen L. Frost is an Adjunct Senior Fellow of the of the East-West Center. She is a frequent speaker and writer on international affairs, especially US-Asian economic and security issues.

From February 1993 to June 1995, Ellen was Counselor to the U. Trade Representative (USTR), focusing in part on Asia. Before joining USTR, she spent a year as a Senior Fellow at the Institute for International Economics (IIE), where she worked on defense trade. Upon leaving US government service in 1995, she returned to IIE. For several years she was a Visiting Distinguished Research Fellow at the National Defense University’s Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs. She joined the East West Center in 2012.

During the 1980s she worked in the private sector, serving as Corporate Director for International Affairs in the Washington office of United Technologies Corporation (1988-91) and as Director for US-Japan Relations in the Washington office of Westinghouse Electric Corporation (1981-88). In the latter position she developed special expertise in technology transfer between the United States and Japan, which was the focus of a major policy initiative at the time. She also served on the Defense Science Board and chaired several committees and working groups at the Aerospace Industries Association and the Electronic Industries Association.

From 1977 to 1981, Ellen was Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Economic and Technology Affairs at the Department of Defense. While at the Pentagon she was responsible for export controls, technology transfer, and economic and industrial aspects of international arms collaboration. Her US government experience also includes positions within the US Treasury Department (1974-77), where she worked on development finance, food aid, and trade; the US Senate (1972-74), where she handled defense, trade, and foreign policy issues for a California senator; and the Department of State (summer of 1963), where she worked in the Bureau of Eastern and Southern African Affairs.

In 1968-70 she taught Chinese politics and foreign policy as a teaching fellow at Harvard University and also taught her own course in Asian politics at Wellesley College. In 1999 and 2000 she taught a graduate seminar on globalization and development for Washington-based MA candidates from Syracuse University and the University of Pittsburgh. More recently she has taught non-credit adult education courses on China, Japan, and Southeast Asia at Dartmouth’s OSHER program.

Ellen is the author of a number of articles and three books: Asia’s New Regionalism, published in 2008; Transatlantic Trade: A Strategic Agenda, published in May 1997; and For Richer, For Poorer: The New U.S.-Japan Relationship, published in 1987. She co-edited, and wrote an overview chapter for a two-volume publication entitled The Global Century: Globalization and National Security, which was published by the National Defense University in 2001. She has testified before the Congress on several occasions. She is a former Commissioner of the Japan-US Friendship Commission, a grant-making organization created by the US Congress.

She holds a PhD from the Department of Government at Harvard University, where she specialized in Chinese politics and development and attained intermediate proficiency in the Chinese language. She also holds an MA from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, awarded in 1967, and a BA magna cum laude from Radcliffe College, Harvard University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.