Lauren Gottlieb is a research associate in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where she is currently assisting political historian Walter Russell Mead in writing his next book on U.S. policy towards Israel. Before coming to the Council, Lauren was a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of State, working on Israel and Middle East political issues. Lauren has also worked for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and continues to teach a graduate seminar on policy research and writing at Baruch College. A native of New York, Lauren completed her MA in international affairs at Columbia University, her BA in English and international relations at Wesleyan University, and studied abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has studied Bible and medieval Jewish philosophy at several seminaries including Simchat Shlomo, Nishmat, Midreshet Rachel, and Neve in Jerusalem, as well as Drisha in New York.