Johanna Mendelson-Forman

Johanna Mendelson-Forman is a senior advisor with the Managing Across Boundaries Initiative at the Stimson Center, where she works on security and development issues, including regional multilateral engagement, civil-military relations and stabilization and reconstruction. She is also a scholar-in-residence at the School of International Service at the American University.

An expert on the Caribbean, and Brazil, Mendelson-Forman also has worked extensively on foreign assistance and humanitarian programs in Haiti. A former co-director of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Mendelson Forman has written extensively on security-sector reform in conflict states, economic development in postwar societies, gender and conflict, and the role of the United Nations in peace operations

She has held senior positions in the U.S. government, helping create the Office of Transition Initiatives and serving as a senior adviser for Humanitarian Response at the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as at the World Bank’s Post Conflict Unit. She served as a senior advisor to the UN Mission in Haiti.

Mendelson Forman is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the advisory boards of the Latin American Security Network, and RESDAL and she co-chairs the Latin American and Caribbean Council on Renewable Energy.

She holds a J.D. from Washington College of Law at American University, a Ph.D. in Latin American history from Washington University, St. Louis and a Master’s of International Affairs, with a certificate of Latin America studies from Columbia University in New York.