Sundaa Bridgett-Jones, Vice President for the Americas and Chief Partnerships Officer at The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), will deliver the commencement address at GSPIA's 2023 Commencement ceremony.
Following her work as Managing Director of Global Policy and Coalitions with the Rockefeller Foundation in 2021, Bridgett-Jones was tasked to help mobilize an alliance of institutions committed to end energy poverty and drive the clean energy agenda.
A year and a half later, the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) was launched, and Bridgett-Jones became its Vice President and Chief Partnerships Officer, "driving innovative partnerships in support of a just and clean energy transition in developing and emerging economies," shared the GEAPP.
In her prior role as Managing Director for Policy & Coalitions at The Rockefeller Foundation and across her portfolio priorities, she has executed strategies to grow coalitions for pressing global issues such as the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change, equity and economic opportunity, financing development, and U.S.-China relations.
Bridgett-Jones has over 25 years of experience designing and executing high-impact global initiatives. Between 2010 and 2012, she led the Office of Policy Planning and Public Diplomacy at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in groundbreaking advocacy on internet and religious freedoms. As a member of the White House National Security Staff interagency committee, she helped develop the Open Government Partnership, a featured public-private partnership spearheaded by the Obama administration and the Government of Brazil.
Previously, Bridgett-Jones managed c-suite affairs at the United Nations Department of Political Affairs and devised preventive diplomacy plans in South Asia. As an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), she wrote about U.S. foreign policy and democracy promotion after a decade of leading governance initiatives at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). She served with the U.S. Foreign Service in the Middle East, Southern Africa, and Central Asia. Her final assignment was as a USAID representative to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, Iraq, where she set up the first Transitional National Assembly.
She is a member of CFR and the U.S. Export-Import Bank Advisory Committee. She serves on the boards of the Leadership Council on Women in National Security, the Association of Diplomatic Studies and Training, and iMMAP.
Bridgett-Jones holds a master of public and international affairs from the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as a bachelor’s degree in international affairs and African studies from Georgetown University. She is an active member of GSPIA’s Board of Visitors and the Pitt Board of Trustees.
This year’s Commencement ceremony will be held on April 27, 2023, in Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum at 1:00 p.m.