Patrick Quirk, Ph.D. is Vice President for Global Policy and Public Affairs at UNICEF USA .
Prior to joining UNICEF USA, Patrick served as Vice President for Strategy, Innovation, and Impact at the International Republican Institute (IRI), a non-profit, non-partisan entity established by the U.S. Congress in 1983 to advance freedom and democracy globally.
At IRI for nearly six years, Patrick led the development and execution of IRI’s global strategic plan that aimed to maximize the impact of $130 million in programming across 100 countries as well as advance internal reforms that maximize efficiency. He also guided external engagement with the Executive Branch and Congress—with the goal of maintaining policy and financial support for democracy assistance—and managed a team of 60 staff charged with driving programming innovation and assessing the efficacy of IRI work globally. From 2019-2021, while at IRI, he was also a Nonresident Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program of the Brookings Institution
Before joining IRI, Patrick served on the U.S. Secretary of State’s Policy Planning staff in the Department of State during the first Trump Administration. Prior to Policy Planning, he served in State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO) as Senior Advisor for Policy and Strategy. In this capacity, he was the chief political scientist for and a lead author of the 2018 U.S. Stabilization Assistance Review (SAR). He deployed to Kenya, Nigeria, Burma, and Tunisia, among other locations, advising senior U.S. officials on conflict risks and how to mitigate them. During his government service, Dr. Quirk received several Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards.
Prior to joining the Department of State, Patrick was a Research Fellow at the German Marshall Fund and spent a decade designing and implementing conflict prevention and democracy strengthening foreign assistance programs overseas in more than 30 countries, from Somalia to Colombia.
Patrick’s analysis has appeared in Foreign Policy, the Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, NPR, and Real Clear Defense, among other outlets.
His book, “Great Powers, Weak States, and Insurgency: Explaining Internal Threat Alliances ,” was published in 2017. He also co-authored USAID’s “Best Practices in Electoral Security, a Guide for Democracy, Human Rights and Governance Programming ” and is the lead author of CSO’s “Electoral Violence Assessment Framework” assessment methodology.
Concurrent to serving at UNICEF USA, Patrick is a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University. He is also an advisory board member of the Vandenberg Coalition .
He earned a B.A. from Bates College and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University.
Academic Appointment(s)
- Primary
- Adjunct Lecturer, College - Department of Government