Pauline H. Baker

Pauline H. Baker "is President of The Fund for Peace, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. that is dedicated to preventing war and alleviating the conditions that cause conflict. Dr. Baker has also been an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at American University.

"A political scientist who earned her doctorate with distinction from UCLA in 1970, Dr. Baker did her undergraduate work at Douglass College, Rutgers University. From 1964 to 1975, she lived and worked in Nigeria, teaching at the University of Lagos. Dr. Baker also has worked in, and traveled throughout, other African countries and the developing world. She won a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to conduct research in Southern Africa and became a specialist in countries in political transformation.

"From 1996 to 1981, Dr. Baker served as a professional staff member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, serving as staff director of the Africa Subcommittee and covering issues concerning the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and South Asia. She also was Deputy Director of the Aspen Institute’s Congressional Program, a nonpartisan educational forum for Members of Congress. Over 100 Senators and Representatives participated in colloquia she helped design and run, focused on issues concerning the new nations of the former Soviet Union, the environment, peacekeeping and economic change.

"Dr. Baker was a research scientist at the Human Affairs Research Center at the Battelle Memorial Institute and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she founded and ran an influential speakers series on South Africa that hosted over 110 meetings over eight years for the foreign policy community.

"In 1996, Dr. Baker became the chief executive of The Fund for Peace. Under her leadership, the organization went through a major organizational restructuring, which included a strategic focus on internal conflicts. The Fund’s programs focus on a variety of activities: bringing human rights activists and business executives together for sustained dialogue and problem-solving to promote the rule of law and open societies in conflict zones; training analysts to assess countries at risk and the effectiveness of intervention policies; integrating information technology with social science to design an original model, known as CAST (Conflict Assessment System Tool) for pre-conflict early warning and post-conflict performance assessments; and strengthening the capacities of regional organizations to protect civilians in internal disputes. The Fund for Peace specializes in designing strategic approaches and practical solutions to advance international security. It partners with governments, multinational organizations, civil society organizations and corporations around the world.

"A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Women's Foreign Policy Group, and various other professional organizations, Dr. Baker’s latest publications include “Getting it Right: U.S. Policy in South Africa,” in Debra Liang-Fenton, ed., Implementing U.S. Human Rights Policy (2003) and “Conflict Resolution Versus Democratic Governance: Divergent Paths to Peace?” in Chester Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aal, eds., Managing Global Chaos: Sources of and Responses to International Conflict (2000)."