Mary Beth Goodman is the deputy secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-Ordination and Development (OECD).
She is a former American government official, diplomat, and foreign affairs policymaker. Goodman is an international expert on illicit finance flows, beneficial ownership, open government, and accountability mechanisms that reduce corruption. She has worked with governments, civil society organizations, the private sector, and academic and international institutions to advance economic and human capital development, democracy, human rights and social justice around the world.
President Biden appointment Goodman as the U.S. Coordinator for Global COVID-19 Response and Health Security at the U.S. Department of State. President Obama appointed her as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Development, Democracy, and Humanitarian Assistance at the U.S. National Security Council. Previously, Goodman was a career diplomat with the U.S. State Department.
Personal life Goodman has a B.A. in International Affairs and History from James Madison University, a J.D. from the Chicago-Kent College of Law, and an L.L.M in International trade and Comparative Law from the Georgetown University Law Center.
Career Goodman has worked on a variety of foreign affairs topics and foreign policy implementation. Her expertise is in international economic development; transparency and open government efforts; anti-corruption; tracking and interrupting illicit finance flows; stolen asset recovery; beneficial ownership; democracy promotion; and economic negotiations. She has taught student courses and led workshops for practitioners on these topics, including through Princeton University.
Early career Goodman practiced international trade and customs law as an Attorney-Advisor at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the Department of Homeland Security. She participated in the negotiations of several free trade agreements and oversaw the implementation of preferential trade programs such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act for sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean Basin Trade Preference Act (CBTPA) for Caribbean countries. While at CBP, she also advised importers on the classification and rules of origin for goods destined for the U.S. as well as compliance with retaliatory trade sanctions.
Diplomatic career After joining the Department of State in 2003, Mary Beth Goodman served as a career Foreign Service Officer. She was posted in the U.S. Embassies in Bamako, Mali, Islamabad, Pakistan and served in several Washington, D.C.-based posts. During her diplomatic career, she developed and negotiated economic, trade, extractives, energy, and infrastructure agreements and worked on a broad range of international economic and development issues as well as anti-corruption, human rights, asset recovery, and illicit finances from Ukraine to the Middle East to sub-Saharan Africa.
Trade policy Goodman was posted to the U.S. State Department’s Office of Trade Policy. Goodman negotiated the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint, an economic engagement plan between the U.S. and ASEAN countries that ran from 2007 to 2015.
She served as the U.S. representative to the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) transparency and anti-corruption working group, and as the State Department’s negotiator of the U.S. bilateral free trade agreements with Malaysia and Thailand.
She also developed and advocated for the legislative proposal to create Reconstruction Opportunity Zones (ROZs) for Afghanistan and Pakistan announced by President George W. Bush during a 2006 trip to Islamabad.
Afghanistan and Pakistan In 2007, Goodman was posted abroad, serving as the Deputy Counselor and then Counselor for Economic Affairs in the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. She formulated U.S. economic strategy in Pakistan as the lead economic advisor to the Ambassador, focusing on macroeconomics, energy, transportation, bilateral trade, and customs. She also advocated on behalf of U.S. companies in Pakistan in investment disputes with entities of the Government of Pakistan and served as the primary liaison with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, assisting with trade promotion for the 80+ Fortune 500 companies active in the Pakistani market.
Following her post in Pakistan, Goodman served as the Senior Advisor for Economics and Energy to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, then the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (SRAP). Beginning in 2010 as the Ambassador’s senior advisor, she worked on a multitude of issues during the height of the U.S.’ Afghanistan war effort.
On behalf of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, she led the coordination of discussions between Pakistan and the U.S. on economics, energy, water, scientific exchanges, agriculture, and development. as part of the U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue. Goodman provided Congressional and civil society briefings, and served as the lead liaison with the Government of Pakistan.
In that role, she helped develop an economic development strategy for Afghanistan known as the New Silk Road, which included mining, energy, and infrastructure development in coordination with private sector and U.S. government agencies.
Congress and Ambassador Holbrooke and highlighted Goodman’s leadership in negotiations between Afghanistan and Pakistan for the Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Treaty (APTTA), a bilateral agreement to open cross-border trade, boost the economies of both countries, provide more efficient avenues for resupplying U.S. troops in the region, and reduce the flow of precursor chemicals used in the production of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) which threatened civilians and coalition forces in Afghanistan. She developed the U.S. Government's diplomatic strategy for countering the threat of IEDs, and this work ultimately led to an international cooperative effort under the auspices of the World Customs Organization called Programme Global Shield, a multilateral program in conjunction with the United Nations and Interpol. In this capacity, Goodman testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a hearing on “Jamming the IED Supply Chain in Afghanistan and Pakistan: Impeding the Flow of Ammonium Nitrate in South and Central Asia” which was threatening servicemembers, humanitarian officials, and civilians in the region.
Goodman also coordinated U.S. engagement on energy priorities with Pakistan and Afghanistan including the Kerry-Lugar enhanced funding of $7.5 billion.
In subsequent years, Goodman continued studying the region, particularly through the lens of anti-corruption. She published Corruption in Afghanistan articles recommending actions to reduce corruption and graft in Afghanistan, including calling on the U.S. Government to assist with Afghanistan’s accountability and transparency mechanisms.
Center for American Progress
In 2014 and 2015, she worked at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank studying domestic and foreign policy issues. She led CAP’s research on illicit finance, sanctions, corruption and development, with a focus on Africa and South Asia.
She also provided expertise, developed partnerships, and supported the work of the CAP national security & international policy team by developing approaches to countering illicit activity using financial and nonmilitary tools.
Simultaneously, she developed, launched and worked at The Sentry, a civil society initiative co-founded by George Clooney and John Prendergast that conducts forensic investigations on the connection between kleptocracy, corruption, and human rights abuses in Africa. At the same time, she served as Senior Advisor to the ENOUGH Project, a sister organization started by Gayle Smith and John Prendergast as a project of the Center for American Progress to end genocide and crimes against humanity by investigating the financial drivers of mass atrocities.
The White House
August 2011-December 2013
In 2011, Goodman joined the U.S. National Security Council, where she spent more than two years as the Director for International Economics.
In this position, she developed public policy recommendations for senior officials and coordinated White House engagement on a broad range of international economic and development issues, including anti-corruption, transparency, extractives, beneficial ownership, fossil fuel subsidy reform, and women’s empowerment. As part of these efforts, she liaised with non-governmental organizations and private sector partners to coordinate implementation of policy through public-private partnerships.
Goodman coordinated interagency policy development for economic assistance to the Middle East and North Africa in the wake of the Arab Spring. She created new multilateral effort to recover assets stolen by corrupt regimes which resulted in streamlined judicial processing and enhanced international coordination among 40+ countries via the Arab Forum for Asset Recovery.
She managed the U.S. interagency process to support U.S. domestic implementation of the Extractives Industry Transparency Initiative and coordinate international outreach on company disclosures for enhanced extractives transparency.
While at the NSC, Goodman also served as the lead U.S. representative to the Group of Twenty (G-20) Working Group on Anti-Corruption, as well as the Group of Eight (G-8) Transparency Advisory Committee. In the negotiations for both Summits, she was responsible for coordinating policy on anti-corruption, transparency, beneficial ownership, extractives, land, and open data. She then staffed President Obama for trips to the G-8 and G-20 Summits, the United Nations General Assembly, and other bilateral and multilateral engagements.
Goodman was involved in the 2011 launch of the Open Government Partnership, a unique partnership between government leaders from 78 countries and civil society advocates that promotes transparent, participatory, inclusive and accountable governments. She co-led the creation of the OGP action plans for the United States and served on the OGP Steering Committee from its inception in 2011 until 2017. She now serves as an OGP Envoy within the organization’s Action Network.
June 2015 - January 2017
Goodman returned to the NSC in June 2015, serving as the Special Assistant to President Obama and Senior Director at the U.S. National Security Council for Development, Democracy, and Humanitarian Assistance until the end of the Administration. In this role, she was responsible for advising the President of the United States and the National Security Advisor, as well as coordinating policy development and strategies across the U.S. Government on a wide range of issues, stretching from food security to access to electricity, from girls education to developing communities' access to the economy, and from anti-corruption to transparent governments and economies.
After re-joining the NSC, Goodman participated in the negotiations of and coordinated a number of U.S. Government efforts related to the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, which aims to diversify sources of international development financing by increasing domestic resource mobilization in developing countries and securing public-private funding (blended finance) to complement traditional foreign assistance from wealthy countries.
Following the Addis Ababa negotiations, Goodman participated in the U.N. negotiations for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This agenda was designed to replace the Millennium Development Goals, which expired at the end of 2015.