Faculty Profile: Paul Turner

Paul Turner is a national security and international peacebuilding expert with more than 25 years of experience. He has worked at the Department of State as well as with a variety of foreign assistance implementers, universities, and non-profits. Paul currently serves as the President and Executive Director of the Fund for Peace (FFP), an organization created nearly 70 years ago to develop practical tools and approaches for reducing conflict. FFP contributes to more peaceful and prosperous societies by engineering smarter methodologies and smarter partnerships. FFP empowers policy-makers, practitioners, and populations with context-specific, data-driven applications to diagnose risks and vulnerabilities and to develop solutions through collective dialogue. Mr. Turner has worked in more than 45 countries and conducted research or hosted policy dialogues on another 50 countries on each continent except Antarctica. His career has placed him in numerous countries that were emerging from their isolation from the international community or were experiencing extreme sanctions which led to economies designed to protect their goods. He has advised political, economic, religious, and civil society leaders to promote peace and stability at the local, national, regional, and global levels.

Paul just completed MIT's Seminar XXI National Security Fellowship and serves on the Board of Finn Church Aid Americas, Reimagining New Communities, and The Peace-Led Climate Friendly Sustainable Development Forum. He has served as an adjunct professor at American University and the University of Maryland and regularly presents at universities such as the U.S. Army War College, National Defense University, Oxford University, Georgetown University, University of Buea, and Duke University. He holds a BA in Humanities and a BS in Political Science from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and an MA in Peace and Conflict Studies jointly issued by Universitat Jaume I and the European University Centre for Peace Studies.