Elizabeth Cousens became the United Nations Foundation’s third President and Chief Executive Officer in 2020, leading the Foundation’s next generation of work to support the United Nations.
She is a diplomat and thought leader who has worked on the frontlines of peace processes, played an influential role in UN policy innovations from peacebuilding to the Sustainable Development Goals, and helped build public-private partnerships to solve global challenges at scale. Elizabeth has a D.Phil. in International Relations from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, as well as a B.A. in history and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Puget Sound.
Before joining the Foundation, Elizabeth served for several years at the U.S. Mission to the UN in New York. She was Principal Policy Advisor and Counselor to the Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations and later served as the U.S. Ambassador to the UN Economic and Social Council and Alternate Representative to the UN General Assembly where she led U.S. negotiations on the SDGs; served on the boards of UN agencies, funds, and programmes; and was U.S. representative to the UN Peacebuilding Commission.
Elizabeth served with UN missions in Nepal and the Middle East, and worked as an analyst in conflict zones, including Bosnia and Haiti. She was previously Director of Strategy for the HD Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue which promotes and conducts mediation of armed conflict; Vice President of the International Peace Institute, where she led initiatives on global crisis management and UN reform; and Director of the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum, a research group that provides country and regional expertise to the UN on conflict and crisis situations.