Rothkopf served as a senior executive and editor at Institutional Investor, Inc. and served in a similar capacity at Financial World magazine. Later, Rothkopf co-founded and served as chairman and chief executive of International Media Partners, Inc., which published CEO Magazine and Emerging Markets newspaper and organized the CEO Institutes. In 1993, he joined the Clinton Administration as Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade Policy and Development. Rothkopf later served as Acting U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, directing the 2,400 employees of the International Trade Administration including the U.S. Commercial Service, the International Economic Policy Bureau, the Bureau of Import Administration, and the Bureau of Trade Development. He left government service and became managing director of Kissinger Associates, the international advisory firm founded and chaired by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger. In 1999, he co-founded and served as chairman and CEO of Intellibridge Corporation, a provider of international analysis and open-source intelligence for the U.S. national security community and selected investors, financial organizations and other corporations. In 2012, the Washington Post Company, then a division of Graham Holdings Company, named Rothkopf CEO of the FP Group and Editor at Large of its Foreign Policy magazine, ForeignPolicy.com, and FP Events. He served until May 2017. Later, he co-founded and served as president and CEO of Garten Rothkopf, an international advisory firm specializing in transformational global trends, notably those associated with energy, security, and emerging markets. He is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he chairs the Carnegie Economic Strategy Roundtable, and chairman of the National Strategic Investment Forum Dialogue, a forum convening leading institutional investors for discussions about critical issues of investment strategy. In addition, Rothkopf serves or has recently served as a member of the advisory boards of the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Johns Hopkins/Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Center for Global Development, and the Center for the Study of the Presidency. Rothkopf is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and has taught international affairs at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Columbia University's Graduate School of International and Public Affairs, the Georgetown School of Foreign Service and has lectured at leading universities including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, the National Defense University and the Naval War College. A Democrat, he has said he voted for President Barack Obama twice. In 2018, Rothkopf became a registered foreign agent and media consultant for the United Arab Emirates, receiving $540,000 in 2018 alone.
Publications
Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power , which was described by David E. Sanger in The New York Times as "the definitive history of the National Security Council."
, published in 2008, was described by Rana Foroohar in Time Magazine as "perhaps the definitive chronicle of Davos Man."
Power, Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government-and the Reckoning That Lies Ahead, published in 2012, was well received in the popular press.
National Insecurity: Making U.S. Foreign Policy in an Age of Fear, 2014.
The Great Questions of Tomorrow, 2017.
He is the author, co-author, co-editor of and contributor to additional books including The Global Century: Globalization and National Security, Cuba: The Contours of Change, The Price of Peace: Emergency Economic Intervention and U.S. Foreign Policy, The Common Market: Uniting the European Community and The Big Emerging Markets.
