Richard Ponzio is Director of the Global Governance, Justice & Security Program and a Senior Fellow at Stimson. Previously, he directed the Global Governance Program at The Hague Institute for Global Justice, where (in a partnership with Stimson) he served as Director for the Albright-Gambari Commission on Global Security, Justice & Governance. He brings expertise in the areas of global and national democratic institution-building, global political economy, South-Central Asia, and the role of international institutions in responding to state fragility, climate instability, global financial volatility, and population displacement.
Ponzio is formerly a Senior Adviser in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he conceptualized and coordinated Secretary Hillary Clinton’s and later John Kerry’s New Silk Road initiative. Earlier he served as a Senior Strategy and Policy Officer in the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, where he initiated a global network of multi/bilateral peacebuilding and stabilization organizations. From 1999-2009, Ponzio served in a variety of senior policy and strategic planning positions for the United Nations in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, the Solomon Islands, and New York.
Ponzio has published widely in academic and policy journals, edited volumes, newspapers, U.N. policy reports, and books, including Democratic Peacebuilding: Aiding Afghanistan and other Fragile States (OUP 2011), Human Development and Global Institutions: Evolution, Impact, and Reform (Routledge 2016, co-authored with Dr. Arunabha Ghosh), and Just Security in an Undergoverned World (OUP 2018, co-edited with Dr. William Durch and Dr. Joris Larik).
He serves on the boards of the Academic Council on the UN System and the Coalition for the UN We Need, as well as on the Steering Committee of the Mary Robinson-led Climate Governance Commission