Expertise

Poverty alleviation and inequality; sustainable development; humanitarian assistance; human rights; food security; US foreign and development policy; international development

At the Keough School

Ray Offenheiser serves as senior advisor to the dean and director of the Keough School’s McKenna Center for Human Development and Global Business, which seeks to understand the critical role of global business in reducing poverty and inequality. He also serves as professor of the practice at Notre Dame, teaching graduate and undergraduate students in courses on inequality and sustainability. Offenheiser is a member of the Keough School’s Leadership Council.

Courses

• Policy Lab: Sustainability, Ethics, and Natural Resources (course for master of global affairs and undergraduate global affairs major)
• Policy Lab: Why do Pope Francis, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates Worry About the Inequality Pandemic? (course for master of global affairs and undergraduate global affairs major)

Biography

Offenheiser served as the inaugural William J. Pulte Director of the Keough School’s Pulte Institute for Global Development, where he oversaw and developed the Pulte Institute’s academic, research, and public policy activities, as well as its strategy for long-term growth. He also identified and cultivated critical, strategic partnerships between the institute and companies, federal agencies, foundations, and private philanthropists. Additionally, he represented the Pulte Institute at local, national, and international events.

A widely known nonprofit leader and innovator with a broad range of international development experience in Asia, Africa and Latin America, Offenheiser served as president of Oxfam America for 20 years. Under his leadership, the agency grew eightfold and repositioned itself in the United States as an influential voice on international development, human rights and governance, humanitarianism, and foreign assistance.

Prior to joining Oxfam, Offenheiser represented the Ford Foundation in Bangladesh and the Andean and Southern Cone regions of South America. He has directed programs for the Inter-American Foundation in Brazil and Colombia, and he has worked for Save the Children Federation in Mexico. At the 2012 G20 Summit, he was appointed by the Obama administration to represent civil society interests on the leadership council of the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa.

Offenheiser has served as honorary president of Wetlands International, and he was a co-founder of the ONE Campaign, the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network and the Food Policy Action Network. He has served on the advisory boards of the World Economic Forum, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Aspen Institute, the World Agricultural Forum, the Gates Foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative, Harvard Business School, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Cornell University.

A 1971 graduate of Notre Dame, Offenheiser also holds a master’s degree in development sociology from Cornell University. He currently serves as chair of the board of directors for BRAC USA is the US-based affiliate of international development organization BRAC, one of the largest nongovernmental organizations in the world, which reaches more than 100 million people in 11 countries with evidence-based approaches that assist families to break out of the cycle of poverty. He also serves on the board of the Consensus Building Institute and the Oxfam America Action Fund and on the Forum for Corporate Responsibility of the BHP Corporation and the advisory board of the Emerging Markets Investors Alliance (EMIA). Offenheiser has been a frequent commentator with US and international media.

In the Media

• The humanitarian response to the earthquake in Turkey and Syria (Sky News Arabia – in Arabic)