Stephen J. Del Rosso

Stephen J. Del Rosso oversees grantmaking across the International Peace and Security program, with direct responsibility for Carnegie Corporation of New York’s work on Asian security, peacebuilding in Africa, bridging the academic-policy gap, Track II with Iran and North Korea, and quantum and international relations. Prior to joining the Corporation, he served as director of programs for the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (now Global Affairs), one of the country’s largest and most active international affairs forums. Del Rosso’s previous foundation experience includes management of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ global security grantmaking program for almost six years and coordination of its final efforts in Eastern and Central Europe.

A former career diplomat, Del Rosso served nearly 10 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, with overseas assignments in Central America and the Caribbean during the height of U.S. engagement in those regions in the mid-1980s. In Washington, he had tours in the Department of State’s operations center and as staff officer to Secretary of State George P. Shultz, during which he also participated in numerous overseas missions. His other Foreign Service assignments included program coordinator of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, arms control legislative management officer, and director of the office of legislative operations. He was also a presidential management intern (now fellow) in the international affairs division of NASA, a news producer at Voice of America, and principal staff assistant to the late Sir Julian Critchley, a British member of Parliament.

Del Rosso holds a PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania, a master of arts in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he was an Earhart Fellow, a diploma in international studies from the Bologna Center of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a BA in English from Tufts University.

He is a former member of the board of the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre; chairman emeritus of the board of the Baltic-American Partnership Fund (an independent grantmaking foundation established by USAID and the Open Society Foundations); and an associate fellow at the Geneva Centre on Security Policy. He is also a member of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia Advisory Committee, the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the International Studies Association.