Connect US, a foundation/NGO foreign policy initiative founded in 2004, has announced that Eric P. Schwartz has been appointed Executive Director. Connect US seeks to promote effective collaboration and advocacy among non-governmental organizations working for responsible U.S. engagement on global issues such as international justice and human rights, environmental protection, international security, economic development and international health. (For more information on Connect US, please visit http://www.connect.us/.)

Here’s more from their official press release today:

The Connect US Council, made up of a donors’ collaborative that includes the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, has asked Schwartz to design a set of strategies to support and strengthen an emerging network of groups advocating for responsible U.S. global engagement. Under his leadership, and in a consultative process involving some 200 individuals and organizations that make up the organization’s network, Connect US will develop a new strategic plan over the course of the coming months.

Prior to his appointment to Connect US, Schwartz served as the UN Secretary General’s Deputy Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery. Working with former President Clinton, the Special Envoy, Schwartz was the senior most UN headquarters official with full time responsibility for promoting and coordinating the international recovery effort in the five most severely affected countries in Asia.

Beyond his most recent UN position, Schwartz has a long and distinguished career in senior public service positions involving international relations, human rights and international humanitarian response. In 2003 and 2004, he was the second-ranking official at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. A faculty member at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, he also served for eight years at the U.S. National Security Council, ultimately heading the White House office responsible for humanitarian and United Nations affairs. In that capacity, he managed humanitarian responses to crises in the Balkans, East Timor, Northern Iraq, Sierra Leone, and other parts of the world. Earlier in his career, he served as a Staff Consultant to the U.S. House of representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, and as Washington Director of the human rights organization Asia Watch (now known as Human Rights Watch- Asia).