By Joshua Miller
Tony Pipa is a senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program. In that capacity, he studies efforts to realize the universality of the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), exploring how economic mobility and security, and democratic cohesion and governance, can be advanced simultaneously in developed and developing countries. He also studies ways of maximizing the impact of U.S. development assistance and advancing policy strategies to systematize innovative financing models for development, including blended finance and public-private partnership models.
He has more than 25 years of experience in the philanthropic and public sectors addressing poverty in the U.S. and globally. His unique experience ranges from the local to the global and from startups to complex global enterprises, applying lessons across state, federal, and global levels.
He served as chief strategy officer for USAID and as U.S. special coordinator for the Post-2015 Agenda at the Department of State, leading the U.S. delegation at the U.N. to negotiate and adopt the SDGs. As deputy assistant to the administrator in Policy, Planning, and Learning at USAID, he oversaw the Agency’s global policy engagement and launched major partnerships with bilateral donors.
An independent consultant prior to his appointment, he ran the NGO Leaders Forum at Harvard University, an informal think tank for the CEOs of the largest U.S. NGOs, providing a platform to elevate international development in U.S. foreign policy and increase the effectiveness of their global operations. He also helped launch Foundation for Louisiana out of the governor’s office and worked with Oxfam America, the Family Independence Initiative, and multiple philanthropic collaboratives in the wake of hurricane Katrina. He served as founding executive director of the Warner Foundation, addressing issues of race and poverty in North Carolina and was founding director of philanthropic services at the Triangle Community Foundation.
He has published articles, book chapters and opinion pieces on financial innovation to end poverty, the role of NGOs in a new aid architecture, nonprofit policy proposals to strengthen U.S. communities, and the importance of local charities to disaster resilience. He attended Stanford University, was graduated from Duke University, and earned a Master of Public Administration at the Harvard Kennedy School.
