President-Elect
Sarah Beran is president-elect of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. She previously served as a partner at Macro Advisory Partners, which she joined in 2025 after a distinguished career in the U.S. Foreign Service — most recently as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
From 2022 to 2024, Ms. Beran served as senior director for China and Taiwan Affairs at the White House National Security Council. Her portfolio encompassed technology export controls, investment screening, trade policy, counternarcotics, Russia sanctions and Taiwan contingency planning. She led strategic preparations for multiple heads-of-state summits, negotiated the reopening of senior diplomatic channels with Beijing, and helped forge the first U.S.-China understanding on AI safety in the context of nuclear command and control.
Ms. Beran also served as then-U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s deputy executive secretary for the Indo-Pacific, led the office responsible for U.S. engagement in APEC, and served as former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s director of the office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs. She was posted overseas in Beijing, Islamabad, Jerusalem, and Quito. Her previous domestic assignments include office director for economic policy in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, special assistant to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Lebanon desk officer.
Ms. Beran speaks Mandarin and Spanish. She joined the Foreign Service in 2002 and graduated from Claremont McKenna College in 1999.