Eric P. Schwartz

Eric Schwartz "is the Executive Director of the Connect U.S. Fund. Prior to joining the Fund in a full-time capacity in 2007, Eric Schwartz served as the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Deputy Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery. In that role, he worked with the Special Envoy, former President Clinton, to promote coordination, accountability to donors and beneficiaries, and best practices in the recovery effort. Before this appointment, Mr. Schwartz served as a lead expert for the congressionally mandated Mitchell-Gingrich Task Force on United Nations Reform. Prior to that, in 2003 and 2004, he served as the second-ranking official at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. From 1993 to 2001, Mr. Schwartz served at the National Security Council, ultimately as Senior Director and Special Assistant to the President for Multilateral and Humanitarian Affairs. He managed administration responses on a range of peacekeeping, humanitarian and refugee issues, including U.S. support for and involvement in the INTERFET deployment in East Timor (1999), the U.S. train and equip program for West African troops in Sierra Leone (1999), the rescue of Kurdish refugees from Northern Iraq (1996), the resettlement of Vietnamese boat people (mid-1990s), safe haven for Haitian refugees (1994), and U.S. relief efforts in Central America and Kosovo (1999). He also had responsibilities for rule of law and human rights issues, and initiated and managed the White House review that resulted in U.S. signature of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. From 2001 through 2003, Mr. Schwartz held fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson Center, the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Council on Foreign Relations, completing articles and book chapters on peace operations, humanitarian issues, and refugee policy. As a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, he directed the Independent Task Force on Post-Conflict Iraq, working closely with Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Dr. James Schlesinger, co-chairs of the Task Force. During this period, he also served as a contributor to the Responsibility to Protect Project of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. From 1989 to 1993, Mr. Schwartz served as Staff Consultant to the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs. Prior to his work on the Subcommittee, he served as Washington Director of the human rights organization Asia Watch (now known as Human Rights Watch-Asia). He holds a law degree from New York University School of Law, where he was a recipient of a Root-Tilden Scholarship for commitment to public service through law; a Master of Public Affairs degree (with a specialization in International Relations) from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University; and a Bachelor of Arts degree, with honors, in Political Science from the State University of New York at Binghamton. Mr. Schwartz currently serves as a visiting faculty member at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University."

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