Saad Ansari serves in the Obama Administration in the Office of the Under Secretary of the Navy, and is also the Defense representative to the White House's Detroit Working Group, an interagency initiative to rebuild Detroit. He also served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense focusing on Stability and Humanitarian Affairs policy.

Prior to joining government, Saad worked in a tech startup and also co-founded Fawakih, a pioneer Arabic and Islamic Studies institute in America. He graduated from Yale’s Jackson Institute in 2014, where he researched how to reconstruct after countries fall apart. His participation and remarks reflect only his personal opinion.