Former U.S. Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice
Desirée Cormier Smith served as the U.S. Department of State’s inaugural Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice from 2022 until 2024. In this groundbreaking role, she led efforts to promote and advance the human rights for people of African descent, Indigenous peoples, Roma people, and other marginalized racial and ethnic communities around the world through U.S. foreign policies and programs. Previously, she served as the Senior Advisor in the Department of State’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs, where she played an integral role in ensuring robust U.S. support for the newly created UN Permanent Forum for People of African Descent. Ms. Cormier Smith also worked at the Open Society Foundations as the Senior Policy Advisor for Africa, Europe, and Eurasia. In that role, she led the global foundation’s U.S. advocacy strategy and execution on a wide range of human rights issues in these dynamic and diverse regions. From 2015 until 2020, she was the Senior Director with Albright Stonebridge Group’s Africa Practice, where she advised and assisted private and social sector clients on growth strategies across the African continent. Ms. Cormier Smith began her career as a State Department Foreign Service Officer with assignments in Mexico, South Africa, and Washington, DC.
Ms. Cormier Smith is the recipient of five Department of State Meritorious Honor Awards and the Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Undergraduate Fellowship. She is an alumnus of the International Career Advancement Program and is a member of the 2019 class of Next Generation National Security Leaders Fellowship at the Center for a New American Security. She was honored by New America as a 2020 Black American National Security and Foreign Policy Next Generation Leader and is a 2020 alumnus of the New Leadership Council Washington, DC chapter. She was recognized by the Most Influential People of African Descent (MIPAD) as a Global Top 100 leader in politics and governance in 2023. Ms. Cormier Smith is the inaugural recipient of the Harvard Kennedy School Black Alumni Association’s Distinguished Achievement Honor in 2024.
She currently serves on the Advisory Council of Global Kids, an educational non-profit aimed to inspire underserved youth to pursue careers in public policy and global affairs, and on the Advisory Board of Shea Yeleen, a social enterprise dedicated to empowering women in West Africa and the U.S. Ms. Cormier Smith was a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations from 2019 until 2024.
Ms. Cormier Smith holds a B.A. in Political Science and Psychology from Stanford University and a M.A. in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. She is proficient in Spanish and French.
