Dr. Richard Ponzio is Senior Fellow and Director of the Global Governance, Justice & Security Program at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C., where he also co-directs the Global Governance Innovation Network. His work focuses on global governance innovation, United Nations reform, democratic institution building, and the role of international institutions in responding to challenges such as state fragility, climate instability, financial volatility, and population displacement. He has been a prominent analyst and advocate around the 2024 Summit of the Future and the wider reformed multilateralism agenda. Previously, Ponzio directed the Global Governance Program at The Hague Institute for Global Justice, where he served as project director for the Albright-Gambari Commission on Global Security, Justice & Governance, a partnership with Stimson. Earlier he was 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 Secretaries Hillary Clinton’s and later John Kerry’s New Silk Road initiative. From 1999 to 2009 he held senior policy and strategic planning posts with the United Nations, including assignments in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, the Solomon Islands, and New York. His books include Democratic Peacebuilding: Aiding Afghanistan and Other Fragile States (Oxford University Press, 2011) and Human Development and Global Institutions (Routledge, 2016), co-authored with Arunabha Ghosh. He completed his doctorate in politics and international relations at the University of Oxford as a Clarendon Scholar, with earlier degrees from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the Graduate Institute Geneva, and Columbia University.
