Markos Kounalakis, Ph.D. is a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, a Senior Fellow at the Center on Media, Data, and Society at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oregon-UNESCO Crossings Institute. He is an award-winning, nationally syndicated foreign affairs columnist, author, and scholar whose expertise spans international relations, geopolitics, and subnational diplomacy.

Wars and revolutions are where Kounalakis cut his teeth as a foreign correspondent, covering the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, Yugoslavia's civil war, and the final stages of Soviet occupation in Afghanistan for Newsweek and NBC-Mutual News. His front-row seat to the end of the Cold War and the reconfiguration of global power dynamics informs his unique perspective on California's emergence as a geopolitical force. For nearly a decade, his columns appeared weekly in the McClatchy chain of 30 newspapers from Sacramento, California to Miami, Florida. His work remains in global syndication and is read worldwide. In 2018, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists recognized that "Kounalakis's world affairs columns not only offer strong prose and strong opinions, they offer an education."

Dr. Kounalakis's books are wide-ranging, examining topics from Silicon Valley's global technological revolution to America's geopolitical struggles with China and Russia. His most recent work, Freedom isn't Free: The Price of World Order (Anthem Press, 2022), analyzes political, economic, social, and moral trade-offs in a world in flux. His Hoover Institution Press book Spin Wars & Spy Games: Global Media and Intelligence Gathering (2018) explores how global media organizations operate as intelligence-gathering networks and diplomatic outposts. 

This research directly informs his analysis of California's cultural and technological soft power. As both a political scientist and journalist, Kounalakis brings rigorous academic analysis and on-the-ground reporting experience to his examination of California's role on the world stage. His unique position as California's "Second Partner," married to Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis, provides insider access to the state's policy-making apparatus and diplomatic engagements, offering readers unprecedented insights into how it exercises power beyond its borders.

Dr. Kounalakis earned his Ph.D. summa cum laude in International Relations from Central European University, his M.S. from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, and his B.S. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2017, President Barack Obama appointed him to the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board in the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. He has been a Trustee of The Asia Foundation since 2020 and serves on the Advisory Board of the Council for International Relations in Greece.

Dr. Kounalakis and Lt. Governor Kounalakis have two sons, Neo and Eon, and make their home in California, the state that serves as both his research subject and the vantage point from which he observes the evolving nature of power in the 21st century