Peter Twyman

Peter Twyman is an Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and Deputy Director of Columbia World Projects (CWP), part of Columbia Global. He has more than 30 years of experience in global development, public health, nonprofit leadership, philanthropy, and social impact.

At Columbia World Projects, Twyman works at the intersection of academic research and practice, developing initiatives that bring together faculty, students, governments, nonprofit organizations, funders, and communities to address complex social challenges in the United States and globally. He oversees a global portfolio of social impact projects and has helped develop grantmaking, fellowship, and leadership programs that support faculty and practitioners in translating research and knowledge into real-world impact.

Prior to joining Columbia World Projects, Twyman spent a decade in nonprofit executive leadership, serving as CEO of Keep a Child Alive and Executive Director of Yamba Malawi. In these roles, he led organizations working at the intersection of global development, health, and poverty and worked closely with foundations, individual philanthropists, and other funders to mobilize resources and shape philanthropic investments. Earlier in his career, he spent more than a decade managing large-scale, U.S. government-funded global health and HIV programs, including eight years at ICAP at Columbia University, where he led programs supporting ministries of health and other partners across sub-Saharan Africa to expand HIV treatment and prevention services and strengthen health systems.

His areas of interest include global development and health; philanthropy and the financing of social impact; nonprofit leadership and organizational development; locally led development; and the translation of research into policy and practice. He is particularly interested in how changes in development finance and philanthropy are reshaping relationships among funders, governments, international organizations, and locally led organizations.

At SIPA, Twyman serves as a faculty advisor for Capstone workshops addressing international development, philanthropy, and social impact. His current Capstone, in partnership with the Segal Family Foundation, examines the changing philanthropic landscape in West Africa and opportunities to strengthen locally led organizations and regional funding ecosystems.

Twyman serves on the boards of Yamba Malawi, Friendship Bench, and UHAI-EASHRI, a regional foundation that supports human rights and social justice organizations working with and for LGBTQ+ people and sex workers in East Africa. He holds an MPH from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, an MA in Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine, and a BA from Connecticut College.