Donald Steinberg
Ambassador Donald Steinberg serves as Executive Director of the non-profit Mobilizing Allies for Women, Peace, and Security (MAWPS), which works to expand the leadership and participation of women in global security issues and peace processes, supporting women-led organizations in more than 30 conflict-affected countries. From 2021 to 2024, he served as Expert Advisor to the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where he focused on expanding locally led development, re-aligning U.S. policies with the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, and promoting the leadership and engagement of historical marginalized groups in USAID’s development and humanitarian assistance programs.
In four decades of public service, he served as Deputy Administrator at the USAID under the Obama administration, U.S. Ambassador to Angola, Director of the Department of State’s Joint Policy Council, White House Deputy Press Secretary, National Security Council Senior Director for Africa, Special Haiti Coordinator, the President’s Special Representative for Humanitarian Demining, and Acting Chief Textile Negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. From 1987 to 1990, he was foreign policy advisor to House of Representatives Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, and director of the House Task Force on Trade and Competitiveness. As a State Department Foreign Service officer, he also served abroad as Officer-in-Charge of the American Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, during that country’s transition from apartheid to non-racial democracy, and at U.S. diplomatic missions in Brazil, Malaysia, Mauritius, and the Central African Republic.
In the civil society arena, he was a senior fellow at the NGO umbrella organization, InterAction, supporting its members in expanding the diversity, equity and inclusion of their 180 NGO members. He also served on the Inter-Action board for four years. He has been president and CEO of World Learning, deputy president of International Crisis Group, board chair of the Women’s Refugee Commission, visiting professor at Dartmouth University, senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a member of the UN Secretary General’s Civil Society Advisory Group for Women, Peace and Security.
Ambassador Steinberg received the Presidential Meritorious Service Award, the Robert Frasure Award for International Peace, the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship, InterAction’s Leet Award for Women’s Empowerment, the Hough Award for Excellence in Print, the Cohen Award for Prevention of Genocide and Atrocities, and lifetime Distinguished Service Awards from the State Department and USAID. He has been confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate three times for public office, addressed the U.N. General Assembly and Security Council, and testified before Congress on multiple occasions.
He has published more than 200 articles in major periodicals, journals, and other outlets on foreign policy, development assistance, humanitarian affairs, gender, refugees and internally displaced persons, atrocity prevention, and global governance. In 2004-5, he visited displaced persons camps on five continents under a Randolph Jennings fellowship from the U.S. Institute of Peace, which published his monograph, The Orphans of Conflict. He holds master’s degrees in economics from the University of Toronto and in journalism from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s degree from Reed College. He has two adult children and resides in Falls Church, Virginia.