​Richard Ponzio is the Director of the Global Governance, Justice & Security Program and a Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center. Previously, he directed the Global Governance Program at The Hague Institute for Global Justice, where (in a partnership with the Stimson Center) he served as Director for the Albright-Gambari Commission on Global Security, Justice & Governance. Ponzio brings expertise in the areas of global and national democratic institution-building, global political economy, South-Central Asia, and the role of international institutions in responding to state fragility, climate instability, global financial volatility, and population displacement. Ponzio is formerly a Senior Adviser in the U.S. Department of State's Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he conceptualized and coordinated Secretary Hillary Clinton's and later John Kerry's New Silk Road initiative. Ponzio completed his doctoral research on a Clarendon Scholarship at the University of Oxford and has published widely in academic and policy journals, edited volumes, newspapers, UN policy reports, and books, including Democratic Peacebuilding: Aiding Afghanistan and other Fragile States and (with Arunabha Ghosh) Human Development and Global Institutions: Evolution, Impact, and Reform.