Daniel F. Runde
Daniel F. Runde is Senior Advisor at BGR Group and a non-Resident Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). A global thought leader and change agent, Mr. Runde’s work centers on leveraging U.S. soft power and the central roles of the private sector and good governance in creating a freer and more prosperous world. He is recognized as an expert in foreign affairs, national security, and global development, and as a leading voice on USAID–State Department relations, U.S. development finance, and the future of multilateral institutions.
From 2010 to 2025, Mr. Runde served as Senior Vice President, Director of the Project on Prosperity and Development, and holder of the William A. Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis at CSIS. He also served as acting director of the CSIS Americas Program from 2020 to 2022. Mr. Runde played a key role in shaping the BUILD Act of 2018 and in helping secure the reauthorization of the Export–Import Bank in 2019. He also helped design the Prosper Africa initiative and has influenced U.S. strategy on Africa, domestic resource mobilization, and World Bank reform.
Prior to CSIS, he led the Foundations Unit for the Department of Partnerships & Advisory Service Operations at the International Finance Corporation, facilitating over $20 million in new funding through partnerships with global private and corporate foundations. Earlier, Mr. Runde was director of the Office of Global Development Alliances at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where he led a global partnership initiative that mobilized $4.8 billion. He began his career in financial services at Alex. Brown & Sons, Inc., in Baltimore and worked for both Citibank and BankBoston in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Mr. Runde has advised the U.S. government, foreign governments, and institutions such as the World Bank Group and United Nations. He serves on the boards of Spirit of America and UMAEF, and previously chaired the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid at USAID (2018–2021) and the Sub-Saharan Africa Advisory Committee at the U.S. Export–Import Bank (2018–2022). He holds the Officer’s Cross in the Order of Isabel la Católica, a Spanish civil order, and is a Commander in the Order of Rio Branco, one of Brazil’s highest diplomatic honors. He has also been honored by the governments of Colombia and Ecuador for his efforts to strengthen U.S. bilateral ties with those countries.
Mr. Runde was the longtime host of the CSIS podcast, Building the Future: Freedom, Prosperity, & Foreign Policy with Dan Runde, and has written for Forbes, the Hill, Foreign Policy, Newsmax, the National Interest, and the Jerusalem Strategic Tribune. He is the author of The American Imperative: Reclaiming Global Leadership through Soft Power (2023). Fluent in Spanish, Mr. Runde graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College and earned a master’s in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
