Senior Advisor, CNQ Global Advisors
Executive Chairman, Ivanhoe Atlantic; former U.S. Special Envoy for the Great Lakes and Sahel Regions of Africa.
Read the bio →J. Peter Pham is a Senior Advisor to CNQ Global Advisors, a global geopolitical and strategic advisory firm chaired by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Pham is Executive Chairman of Ivanhoe Atlantic, the American strategic resources company developing the Kon Kweni iron ore resource at Mount Nimba in Guinea, the world’s highest grade iron ore discovery, among other critical minerals projects in Africa and around the world. He currently also serves as a Non-Executive Director of Africell Global Holdings and has been a Non-Executive Director of Rainbow Rare Earths as well as a strategic advisor to several other companies, with a particular focus on managing geopolitical risk and developing business in Africa.
Pham is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council as well as a Senior Advisor at the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue University, and a Ben Franklin Fellow. He previously served as the United States Special Envoy for the Great Lakes (2018–2020) and Sahel (2020–2021) Regions of Africa, with the personal rank of Ambassador.
Prior to serving in the first Trump administration, Pham was Vice President for Research and Regional Initiatives at the Atlantic Council as well as Director of the Council’s Africa Center (2011–2018). Earlier in his career, he was a tenured associate professor of justice studies, political science, and Africana studies at James Madison University, where he was director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
From 2008–2017, concurrent with his professional responsibilities, he also served as Vice President of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) and Editor-in-Chief of ASMEA’s peer-reviewed quarterly Journal of the Middle East and Africa. He is the author of several books and more than 350 articles, essays and reviews on African politics, security, and economic issues.
Pham is the recipient of numerous state honors and awards from African countries in recognition of contributions made over the course of his career to strengthening relations between the United States and Africa. In 2022, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy.