Peter J. Donaldson is president emeritus of the Population Council and a former director of the Committee on Population at The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He was president of the Population Council from 2005 to early 2015. He came to the Council after serving as the president of the Washington, DC-based Population Reference Bureau (PRB) for nine years. Before joining PRB, Donaldson was director of the Population Council’s program in Asia and was responsible for staff and activities in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Earlier in his career, Peter was a member of the senior staff of Family Health International (now FHI360). He began his career as a fellow at the Institute for Population and Social Research at Mahidol University in Bangkok. He is a former member of the board of directors of the Population Association of America and past president of the Association of Population Centers, a consortium of 26 leading American university and non–profit population research centers. He currently serves as a member of the board of directors of the Global Health Council. He has authored or co-authored numerous scientific articles and popular essays and written or edited six books on demography and population policy. He received a B.A. from Fordham University and a Ph.D. in sociology from Brown. In 2010, he received an honorary doctorate from Mahidol University.