Uzra Zeya

Uzra Zeya is an internationally renowned foreign policy and non-profit leader with decades of expertise at the forefront of international peace, security, and human rights. From 2021 to 2025, she served as U.S. Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights. In this Senate-confirmed role, she led U.S. global diplomatic efforts to strengthen democracy, advance universal human rights, support refugees, promote rule of law and counternarcotics cooperation, fight corruption and intolerance, bolster civil society, and counter human trafficking. Under her leadership, the United States rebuilt the U.S. Refugee Admissions program to reach a 30-year resettlement peak; launched the first-ever, U.S. private sponsorship program for refugees that drew in over 100,000 American volunteers from all 50 states; elevated the global fight against corruption as a core national security priority; expanded global partnerships to fight gender-based violence and increase disability and LGBTQI+ inclusion; introduced new accountability tools to curb transnational repression and misuse of commercial spyware; and helped secure the release of hundreds of political prisoners from across the globe.  From 2021 to 2025, she served concurrently as the U.S. Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, rallying international partners to support the human rights of the Tibetan people and help preserve their unique cultural, religious, and linguistic identity. 

Zeya is former President and CEO of the Alliance for Peacebuilding, a non-partisan global network of more than 150 organizations working in more than 180 countries to end conflict by peaceful means. In this role she co-led a NGO coalition that secured bipartisan adoption of the landmark Global Fragility Act, a comprehensive strategy to pivot the U.S. approach to conflict resolution towards locally-led, upstream prevention and away from costly, military interventions.

Her distinguished diplomatic career includes senior leadership roles at U.S. embassies in France and India, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; and offices of the Deputy Secretary of State and Secretaries of State Rice and Clinton. As DRL Acting Assistant Secretary, she doubled foreign government contributions to and recruited the first private sector stakeholders to join the Global Equality Fund to advance LGBTQI+ equality, led U.S. human rights dialogues with China, and launched the first-ever U.S. government public-private partnership to fight gender-based violence. She also served as a human rights officer in Syria, in addition to diplomatic postings in Egypt, Oman, and Jamaica, and speaks French, Arabic and Spanish. 

Zeya co-authored a 2021 Council on Foreign Relations report on Revitalizing American Diplomacy that shaped subsequent State Department modernization efforts. She is on the Advisory Board at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre-Dame, and served recently as a commissioner of the Congressional-Executive Committee on China and an ex-officio Board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace.  She was awarded the French Legion d’Honneur and the Cross of Commander of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas in recognition of her diplomatic leadership advancing a more just and peaceful world.