Desirée Cormier Smith

Co-Founder and Principal, The Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice

 

Desirée Cormier Smith is a Co-Founder and Principal of The Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, an initiative designed to defend human rights, global engagement, and foreign assistance. She is also an inaugural Hastings Global Leadership Fellow at the Bunche International Affairs Center at Howard University.

From 2022-2025, she was the inaugural Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice at the U.S. State Department, leading groundbreaking efforts to forge global partnerships to combat racism and promote the human rights of people of African descent, Indigenous peoples, and other marginalized racial and ethnic communities. She previously served as Senior Advisor in the Bureau of International Organizations Affairs, playing a pivotal role in U.S. efforts to re-engage in UN human rights mechanisms. She has held roles at Open Society Foundations and Albright Stonebridge Group and began her career as a Foreign Service Officer serving in Mexico, South Africa, and Washington, D.C.

Vision statement

Multilateralism - or simply, the belief that one can achieve more working collectively and collaboratively with others - has been a guiding principle of my career. The United States cannot solve any of the current crises facing our country alone, nor should we seek to. While the United Nations is far from perfect, it is the best platform we have to promote cooperation among countries in the pursuit of peace, prosperity, and well-being. I am excited to work with UNA-NCA to find ways to bring more awareness about the UN to the American people to protect multilateralism, while also proposing innovative ways to make the UN more responsive and better equipped to address the challenges of today in ways that have real impact on people’s lives.