Government National Security Council Senior Director
Description of Work:

Gayle Smith is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress where she leads the Sustainable Security Program, Co-Chairs the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network and is Co-Chair of the Enough Project. She is also Director of the International Rights and Responsibilities Program.

Previously, Smith served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from 1998-2001, and as Senior Advisor to the Administrator and Chief of Staff of the U.S. Agency for International Development from 1994-1998.

Smith is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the boards of Oxfam America, the Africa America Institute, USA for Africa, and the National Security Network. She also serves on the policy advisory boards of DATA, the Acumen Fund, and the Global Fairness Initiative, and was the Working Group Chair on Global Poverty for the Clinton Global Initiative from 2005 to 2007.

Smith was based in Africa for over 20 years as a journalist covering military, economic, and political affairs for the BBC, Associated Press, Reuters, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Toronto Globe & Mail, London Observer, and Financial Times.

Smith has also consulted for a wide range of NGOs, foundations, and governmental organizations including UNICEF, the World Bank, Dutch Interchurch Aid, Norwegian Church Relief, and the Canadian Council for International Cooperation. She won the World Journalism Award from the World Affairs Council and the World Hunger Year Award in 1991, and in 1999 won the National Security Council’s Samuel Nelson Drew Award for Distinguished Contribution in Pursuit of Global Peace.

She is a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, where she recently co-authored The Other War: Global Poverty and the Millennium Challenge Account. Smith serves as a Trustee of the Africa America Institute and as an independent consultant.