Eileen Donahoe

Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe is a human rights activist and former U.S. diplomat who recently served as U.S. Special Envoy and Coordinator for Digital Freedom at the Department of State. Previously, she served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council, having been appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009. She was the first ambassador following the referent UN body changing from the predecessor United Nations Commission on Human Rights. After serving her term as ambassador, Donahoe was appointed as Director of Global Affairs for Human Rights Watch, where she focused on digital security and Internet governance. She then founded and served as Executive Director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator at the Freeman Spogli Institute's Cyber Policy Center working at the intersection of governance, technology and human rights. She was an affiliate of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, a center of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

In 2023, Donahoe took a leave of absence from her position at Stanford University to serve as the inaugural Special Envoy and Coordinator for Digital Freedom, in the newly established Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy in the U.S. Department of State. In this role, Donahoe worked to promote digital freedom and a rights-respecting approach to U.S. technology policy. She left the role on December 13, 2024.

She currently serves as Vice Chair of the National Endowment for Democracy Board of Directors and on the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She is also a Trustee of Dartmouth College.