Lizzie Ong is a technology policy and Indo-Pacific researcher from Manila, Philippines. She recently graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with Honors Distinction, earning a B.A. in History and a Minor in Public Policy.
At the Institute of World Politics, she produced intelligence and policy briefings for senior government officials on subsea cable disruptions, U.S.-China strategic competition, and digital infrastructure vulnerabilities. As a Tech Policy Fellow with the Paragon Policy Fellowship, she conducted research with North Carolina’s Office of Science, Technology, and Innovation on critical mineral infrastructure and supply chain ecosystems. She now serves as Policy Coordinator, mentoring fellows and leading research teams working across public, private, and government stakeholders.
Alongside her policy work, Lizzie has been building technical depth through a grid optimization project using PJM energy data and a reinforcement learning agent to model how data center demand strains local electricity infrastructure. Through her TFA Ignite Fellowship, she is also examining how AI and educational technology shape learning outcomes in underserved communities.
She will be pursuing these questions as an incoming Asian Studies M.A. student at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where she plans to study how Indo-Pacific states navigate technological competition and build governance capacity under uncertainty.
Concentration: Politics and Security
Hometown: Manila, Philippines; Los Angeles, CA
Academic Background: B.A. in History, University of California, Berkeley