Charles Dambach

Chic Dambach is an adjunct faculty member at Johns Hopkins and American Universities, and he is a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow. He has been President and CEO (currently President Emeritus) of the National Peace Corps Association, President (currently Senior Fellow) of the Alliance for Peacebuilding, CEO of Operation Respect, and Chief of Staff for Congressman John Garamendi. Previously, he held executive positions in education, the arts, sports, and health, and he was an “expert” advisor to the Director of the Peace Corps. He is Chair of the Mali Affinity Group; an advisor for the Washington Strategy Group, and on the board of the Institute for Economics and Peace. He lectures worldwide at colleges and universities and at conferences, and he was a senior consultant with BoardSource where he helped write two books on nonprofit governance.

His career began as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia, and his memoir, Exhaust the Limits, the Life and Times of a Global Peacebuilder, features a lifetime of service and successful initiatives for peace in Africa. A second edition of the book will be published by Apprentice House of Loyola University in March 2020.

He was nominated for the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, and the Institute for Economics and Peace gave him the Leadership and Service for Peace Award in 2016. He was named a Distinguished Alumnus of the Worthington (Ohio) Schools; Distinguished Alumnus and Hall of Fame member of the Oklahoma State University College of Arts and Sciences, and he received the International Platform Association’s Global Coalition Peace Award. The CityLit Project in Baltimore established the Dambach Award for Service to the Literary Arts in his honor. He was named the “2016 Peace Corps Champion” for keeping the spirit of service alive. His TEDx Talk “Why Not Peace” is available on YouTube.

He was a national champion kayak racer and served as an official for canoe and kayak competition in the 1988, 1992 and 1996 Olympic Games. He is a graduate of Oklahoma State University, and he has an MBA degree from Wake Forest University.