Mark Smith

Mark Smith joined American Charities for Palestine as Executive Director on September 29th, 2009. He brings 29 years of unique experience in the military, business and the nonprofit arena to the organization.

Previously, Smith served as President and CEO of Operation Homefront a national non-profit serving military families and wounded warriors with 30 chapters around the country and over 4000 volunteers.

He began his career as an Army officer leading forward-deployed armor units in the U.S. and Germany after graduating from Washington & Lee University with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He earned his M.A. in strategic studies and economics from the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and went on to serve as an assistant professor of International Relations and National Security Studies at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. Smith subsequently served as special assistant to former Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), Gen. (Ret.) John R. Galvin. Smith separated from the Army in 1994 and became a vice president and chief of staff to the CEO of Cedel Bank (now Clearstream) in Luxembourg. In 1997, he and his family returned to New York where he served as senior vice president and chief operations officer of Prudential Investment Management Services. In 2000, he left Prudential and was hired as a consultant by the Chairman & CEO of the Pacific Stock and Options Exchange in San Francisco where he led the project to launch the first fully electronic national stock exchange in the U.S., the ARCA Exchange. After September 11, 2001, Smith focused his professional skills again to public service when he accepted a position as director of Strategic Business Development at Outward Bound, USA. Smith later joined the professional consulting arm of Outward Bound where he coached Fortune 500 and nonprofit leadership teams before joining the Philanthropy Roundtable in Washington D.C. in 2006, where he served as Director of National Security Programs and worked closely with many philanthropic leaders as well as government officials on a myriad of national security issues.

American Charities for Palestine is an innovative charitable organization founded in June 2007 for the purpose of creating a secure and transparent mechanism for making contributions in the health and education sectors that improve the quality of life for Palestinians living in the Palestinian territories while laying the foundations of a viable future Palestinian State to live alongside Israel. ACP signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with USAID on August 1, 2008, that created a donor assurance mechanism that vets recipients and provides accountability and transparency. The MOU ensures that recipients of ACP donations in Palestine are fully vetted and approved by USAID. This is the first such agreement between USAID and any private organization.