A Road Less Traveled: National Security Careers After Law School – Zaid Zaid

Our A Road Less Traveled event series returns with its final event of the ’24-25 Academic Year on Thursday, April 3. We will be speaking with:

Zaid Zaid

Director, Head of U.S. Public Policy, Cloudfare; Former: Head of North America, Strategic Response Policy, Meta; Special Assistant to the President and Associate White House Counsel

Event Details

Thursday, April 3, 2025

1:15 – 2:15 p.m.

Furman Hall

Room 120

RSVP Here! 

Speaker Bio

Zaid is currently Director, Head of U.S. Public Policy at Cloudflare. He is an expert on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and tech policy, with public and private sector experience. Zaid has excelled in the tech sector, in the legal world, and in the diplomatic corp, building upon his previous experience in each chapter of his career. At Cloudflare, Zaid leads the company’s public facing advocacy with the U.S. government, think tanks, and industry groups.  In 2023, he led Cloudflare’s launch of Project Cybersafe Schools at the White House, an initiative that provides free cybersecurity services to small public school districts in the United States.  At Meta, Zaid led Strategic Response Policy for North America, where he and his team focused on U.S. politics and elections, and responded to high-profile incidents around the world. As a lawyer, Zaid served in the Obama Administration as Special Assistant to the President and Associate White House Counsel. In that role, he worked closely with numerous Executive Branch agencies and advised senior White House and Executive Branch officials on policy, risk management, and congressional investigations. While at the White House, he negotiated with Congressional staff on various investigations and represented a witness before the Congressional Select Committee on Benghazi.  As the Senior Attorney Advisor to the General Counsel at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Zaid worked on a number of sensitive policy issues, including an alleged covert action program in Cuba, the agency’s counter-terrorism vetting policy, and an LGBTI inclusion and nondiscrimination policy. In private practice at WilmerHale, Zaid worked on internal investigations and traveled extensively to the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Singapore representing clients. While in private practice, Zaid had a very active pro bono practice, filing briefs on behalf of clients in numerous Courts of Appeal in the United States, working with clients in Egypt, and representing a Guantanamo Bay detainee.  As a political officer in the Foreign Service, Zaid’s diplomatic career spanned one of the most significant modern eras in US foreign policy – the US invasion of Iraq. He served in Iraq as the liaison between the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Iraqi Governing Council and at U.S. Embassy Baghdad where he worked closely with the U.S. Military and the Transitional Iraqi Government on negotiating and implementing the Transitional Administration Law.  He also served in New York at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and at U.S. Embassy Cairo.  Zaid started his diplomatic career studying Arabic at the Foreign Service Institute in Tunis. Zaid is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Truman National Security Project fellow, an ICAP Fellow, a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, and was recently elected to the American Law Institute. He is the Chair of the Advisory Committee for the Council of Global Equality, and serves on the Board of Directors of iMMAP and HALO USA, the Board of Advisors of the School of Foreign Service, and the Board of Governors at Georgetown University. Zaid holds degrees from Columbia Law School, the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.