Professional Affiliation

Executive Director, American Friends of the Episcopal Church of the Sudans (AFRECS)

Expert Bio

Dane Smith is the Executive Director of the American Friends of the Episcopal Church of the Sudans (AFRECS), which supports peacebuilding, literacy, and livelihoods programs for churches in Sudan and South Sudan. It has provided emergency aid to both churches for the internally displaced persons in Sudan and refugees fleeing into South Sudan. An AFRECS Board member since 2016, he has been a consultant and lecturer on international peacebuilding, with a recent focus on faith-inspired peacebuilding. In 2014 and 2016 he was a visiting professor at the Martin Luther King Jr. Evangelical University of Nicaragua, where he taught courses on “Christian Models of Peacebuilding.” In 2011 and 2012 he was Senior Advisor on Darfur in the Office of the U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan. From 2006 through 2009 he was a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, Washington D.C., where he authored “U.S. Peacefare: Organizing American Peace-Building Operations”. From 1999 to 2003, he served as President of the National Peace Corps Association. He served as US Ambassador to Guinea and to Senegal as well as Special Presidential Envoy to Liberia. He was Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1986-1989. Smith holds an A.B. from Harvard College and a PhD in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.