Margaret Williams is a Senior Fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation (CIC). A global affairs and development practitioner, she brings more than 15 years of experience advancing international cooperation and building strategic partnerships across sustainable development, governance, peacebuilding and prevention, and justice and human rights.
Working across stakeholders and sectors, she has fostered cross-regional partnerships and coalitions spanning governments, international and multilateral organizations, civil society, philanthropy, academia, and communities, bringing actors together around shared objectives and finding common ground amid differences.
Most recently, she served as Associate Director of the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies at CIC, where she co-led a coalition of 46 governments and more than 100 partner organizations advancing peace, justice, inclusion, and effective governance as foundations for sustainable development and global cooperation. Through evidence-based policy solutions, strategic convenings, and multi-stakeholder partnerships, she worked with colleagues and partners to translate global commitments into policy and practice, connecting stakeholders from the local to the global level.
Previously, she worked on peacebuilding, youth and women’s empowerment, education, state-society relations, and multilateral affairs. Her experience spans the United Nations, think tanks, international and local non-governmental organizations, and the private sector. She has published on governance, peace and security, youth, the future of sustainable development, and geopolitics.
She is based in New York and has lived in Tunisia, Palestine, Cyprus, and Greece, with additional experience in Georgia, Sierra Leone, Timor-Leste, and Uganda.