Ambassador Donald Steinberg

Guest Author

Ambassador Donald Steinberg is executive director of Mobilizing Allies for Women, Peace and Security, a nonprofit supporting women peacebuilders in two dozen countries facing conflict. From 2021 to 2024, he served as expert advisor to the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, focusing on empowering local partners in developing countries, coordinating U.S. development policy with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and supporting marginalized populations abroad. Prior to USAID, he served as a senior fellow at the NGO umbrella organization InterAction, helping its members to expand the diversity, equity, and inclusion of their institutions.

He served from 2013 until 2017 as president and CEO of World Learning, an international nonprofit organization that provides education, exchange, and development programs in more than 60 countries. He has been on boards and advisory councils of the Women’s Refugee Commission, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, the International Peace Institute, Trickle Up, USA for UN Women, Our Secure Future foundation, and the Global Governance Forum, and has taught poverty eradication and women’s empowerment at Dartmouth College as a visiting fellow.

Ambassador Donald Steinberg has more than 40 years of experience in government, international organizations, and NGOs, focusing on global development, peace processes, gender, and atrocity prevention. He was Deputy Administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development under President Obama, where he focused on the Middle East and Africa; reforms under the USAID Forward agenda; and the inclusion of marginalized groups into the development arena. He was a member of the Deputies Committee at the National Security Council.

His previous service with the U.S. government included director of the U.S. State Department’s Joint Policy Council, White House deputy press secretary, NSC senior director for African Affairs, special Haiti coordinator, U.S. Ambassador to Angola, and the president’s special representative for Humanitarian Demining. He was also deputy president at the International Crisis Group, a Randolph Jennings senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, and a member of the U.N. Civil Society Advisory Group for Women, Peace and Security. His awards include the Presidential Meritorious Service Award, the Frasure Award for International Peace, the Hunt Award for Women’s Empowerment, Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship, the Leet Award for Gender Equality, and Distinguished Service Awards from State Department and USAID.

He holds masters degrees from Columbia University (journalism) and University of Toronto (economic development), and a bachelors degree in economics from Reed College. He has two teen-age sons and resides in Falls Church, Virginia.