Benedetta Berti

Benedetta Berti is a scholar of international relations, an expert on militant groups, and Director of Policy Planning at NATO. She joined NATO after 15 years in scholarly roles. In NATO, she worked primarily under Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

Berti graduated from the University of Bologna (BA) and has her PhD in International Relations from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. She has worked at West Point, the Institute for National Security Studies, and Tel Aviv University, and Foreign Policy Research Institute. She was a TED fellow, with talks in 2015, 2018, and 2022.

Berti is the author of three academic books: Armed Political Organizations: From Conflict to Integration (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), Democratization in EU Foreign Policy: New Member States as Drivers of Democracy Promotion (Routledge, 2015), and, with a co-author, Hezbollah and Hamas: A Comparative Study (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012). She has conducted research in the emerging field of rebel governance.