Safiya Ghori-Ahmad

Safiya Ghori-Ahmad, Senior Managing Director, is a member of the South Asia team at McLarty Associates and helps coordinate the firm’s business development and global client management efforts.

Safiya spent nearly a decade in the U.S. government working on South Asia, and now supports clients on regulatory and policy issues and go-to-market strategies in the region, in particular India and Pakistan. She also serves as a global client manager to several McLarty Associates clients, where she leverages the firm’s assets to deliver positive business outcomes in challenging environments.

Safiya previously served on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, covering South and Central Asia. She also served in the State Department as an advisor on Pakistan and Afghanistan in the Office of the Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan (SRAP) under Secretaries Clinton and Kerry. She began her State Department career in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, where she managed portfolios in South Asia and traveled extensively throughout the region promoting good governance, transparency, and the rule of law.

Prior to joining McLarty Associates, Safiya led global business development at an international law firm where her work took her to Southeast Asia and beyond.

Safiya serves as a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, on the advisory board of Concordia, and is a founding member of the DC chapter of Chief, a network of female executives. She regularly speaks on topics related to DEI, including at Aspen Ideas Festival, SXSW, and the Festival of the Diaspora. She holds a JD and MA from the University of Arkansas and speaks fluent Hindi and Urdu and intermediate Arabic.