Daniel F. Runde is Senior Advisor at BGR Group and a Non-Resident Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS). A global thought leader and change agent, his work centers on leveraging US soft power, the private sector, and sound governance to advance freedom and prosperity amid great-power competition. Runde was a principal architect of the 2018 BUILD Act and a key broker of the Export-Import Bank’s 2018 bipartisan reauthorization. He has shaped debates on USAID–State relations, US engagement in Africa, and domestic-resource mobilization. He has advised the US government, foreign ministries, international bodies, and Fortune 500 firms, and he has been awarded numerous civil honors, including Spain’s Officer’s Cross of the Order of Isabel la Católica and decorations from Brazil, Ecuador, and Colombia. 

From 2010-2025, Runde served at CSIS as Senior Vice President, Director of the Project on Prosperity & Development, William A. Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis, and Acting Director of the Americas Program (2020-22). Earlier, he held senior leadership posts at the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and, from 2005 to 2007, directed USAID’s Office of Global Development Alliances, where he leveraged $4.8 billion through more than 400 public-private partnerships. He began his career in investment banking with Citibank Argentina and Alex. Brown & Sons. 

Runde currently sits on the board of the Ukraine–Moldova American Enterprise Fund, and he previously chaired USAID’s Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid and EXIM’s Sub-Saharan Africa Advisory Committee. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and member of the Bretton Woods Committee, he is the author of The American Imperative: Reclaiming Global Leadership through Soft Power (2022), has written for Forbes, The Hill, Foreign Policy, Newsmax, the National Interest, and the Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, and was the longtime host of the CSIS podcast, ”Building the Future: Freedom, Prosperity, & Foreign Policy with Dan Runde.” 

Runde joined Spirit of America’s Advisory Board in 2020.