Dorothy M. Davis

Dorothy M. Davis is a strategic international development consultant whose career bridges governments, global institutions, and the private sector. As President of Dorothy M. Davis Strategic Global Consulting, she has spent more than two decades designing and executing complex cross-sector initiatives for clients ranging from the United Nations and its agencies to intergovernmental bodies, NGOs, and private enterprises. Her approach begins with a simple guiding question—what does the client need—and unfolds into tailored strategies that turn ambitious ideas into measurable, lasting impact. Over the course of her career, she has worked closely with three UN Secretaries-General, along with dozens of heads of state, foreign ministers, and diplomats across more than two dozen countries spanning Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and the United States.

Ms. Davis's global outlook was shaped early in life. Born in Liberia to a pioneering family in the U.S. Foreign Service, she spent her childhood moving between Nigeria, Tunisia, Switzerland, and the United States, an upbringing that instilled in her a natural fluency in navigating different cultures and institutions. That multicultural foundation, further enriched by Caribbean heritage tracing back to Jamaica, Haiti, the Cayman Islands, Cuba, and Barbados, continues to inform the way she connects people, organizations, and ideas across borders. Her academic training reinforced this global lens: she earned a Bachelor of Science in Broadcasting and Film with a minor in Political Science from Boston University, followed by a Master of Science in Journalism from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where her thesis on Namibia's Turnhalle Conference anticipated the broader collapse of apartheid across Southern Africa.

Beyond her consulting practice, Ms. Davis has built a legacy of public service and advocacy. She spent four years at the helm of the United Nations Development Programme's Goodwill Ambassador Program, recruiting cultural icons such as Danny Glover, Nadine Gordimer, and Zinedine Zidane to champion global development causes. She later founded and chaired the Sirleaf Market Women's Fund, guiding thousands of Liberian market women through the Ebola crisis, and currently serves in advisory and leadership roles with organizations including the African Women Leaders Network-Diaspora Coalition, The Carter Center, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. Her contributions have been recognized with honors such as the Global Poverty Award and a Best Documentary Short Award, and she remains equally devoted to preserving her father Griffith J. Davis's photographic legacy, using his images to link historical narratives with present-day global engagement.