Ramzy Mardini

Ramzy Mardini is the founder of Geopol Labs, a geopolitical risk and strategic advisory firm based in the Middle East.

His research focuses on international security, civil wars, and conflict resolution. He has conducted over five years of conflict field research across nearly a dozen countries, including as a Fulbright-Hays Fellow and as a Minerva Peace Scholar at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC. He was also a consultant at the Dialogue Advisory Group, a European-based organization that facilitates mediation and dialogue between armed actors in active conflict zones. From 2020 to 2025, he was an Associate at the Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts at the University of Chicago.

Prior to graduate studies, Mardini was a Nonresident Fellow at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council, an Adjunct Fellow at the Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies, and a Research Analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. In government, he served at the Executive Office of the President, State Department, Intelligence Community, and later at the White House from 2010 to 2011 within the Office of the National Security Advisor to the Vice President. He is the editor of two books on rebellion and the armed politics of failed states and has written commentary for the New York Times, Financial Times, Washington Post, among others.

Mardini was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He received a PhD and two MAs from the University of Chicago as a William Rainey Harper Fellow within the Department of Political Science, and graduated summa cum laude from Ohio State University. He was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio.