Senior Vice President, UN Foundation and President, the Better World Campaign
One of nation’s most esteemed experts on U.S.-UN affairs, Peter Yeo leads the Better World Campaign’s strategic engagement with Congress, the Administration, and organizations supporting stronger American leadership on the world stage. Yeo’s leadership has helped advance critical legislation in the U.S. Congress to ensure the country meets its obligations to the United Nations, UN Peacekeeping Operations, and UN agencies and organizations.
Yeo joined the Better World Campaign in 2009 with over twenty years of legislative, analytical, and management experience, including senior roles on Capitol Hill and in the State Department. Prior to arriving at UN Foundation, Yeo spent a decade as Deputy Staff Director on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has worked on a broad range of foreign policy and foreign aid issues, including leading negotiations for the landmark HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act of 2003 — PEPFAR — as well as the $50 billion reauthorization of the law in 2008. He also shepherded into law several measures dealing with China, Tibet, Burma, and East Timor.
Prior to his work with the Committee, Yeo served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. State Department, where he successfully advocated for repayment of the U.S. arrears to the UN, and was part of the U.S. delegation to the climate negotiations in Kyoto.
Yeo holds an master’s in East Asian Studies from Harvard University and a bachelor’s in East Asian Studies from Wesleyan University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Board Member of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition.