David Steven

Senior Fellow

David Steven is a senior fellow at the UN Foundation, where he led a team of partners supporting the UN Secretary-General’s Our Common Agenda report. He supports the Foundation’s work on next and future generations and advises on the future of multilateralism. In 2021, he supported the UNF Next Generation Fellows to publish Our Future Agenda on young people and future generations, and to launch the Unlock the Future coalition, which brings together the world’s largest youth-led and youth-focused networks and organizations. David is also a senior fellow at the New York University Center on International Cooperation, where he helped develop the Sustainable Development Goals and co-founded the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children. He was founding director of the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, a multi-stakeholder partnership to accelerate action for the 2030 Agenda targets for peace, justice and inclusion (SDG16+), led the secretariat for the ministerial Task Force on Justice for All, and is an advisor to the Justice Leadership Group. David was a Senior External Adviser to and co-author of the UN/World Bank 2018 flagship report Pathways for Peace and a co-author of the OECD’s States of Fragility Report in 2015. He is a former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of The Risk Pivot: Great Powers, International Security, and the Energy Revolution (Brookings Institution Press, 2014).