John Mathiason is Adjunct Professor at the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy. He is also Managing Director of Associates for International Management Services, a consulting company providing advice and training to international organizations and not-for-profit institutions on results-based management planning and evaluation, including the United Nations Development Group, the United Nations Division for Social Policy and Development, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, the United Nations Office for Internal Oversight, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the World Meteorological Organization, the International Labour Organization, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the International Social Science Council, the AARP, Disabled People’s International, the SSM Foundation of the Dominican Republic, the Ministry of Family, Youth and Children of the Government of Panama, the Equal Opportunity Commission of Hong Kong, the United Nations Development Programme in Ecuador, Architecture for Humanity in Haiti, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and the Club of Madrid. He was the team leader of the Independent External Evaluation of the ILO Evaluation Function that was considered by the ILO Governing Body in November 2010 and team leader of the review of the Management and Accountability System of the United Nations Development System in 2011. He was the lead external consultant to support the Intersessional Working Group of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification in the mid-term evaluation of the UNCCD Strategy (2008-2018). He is a member of the External Evaluation Panel of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and leader of the external reviews of evaluations by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the assessment of the evaluations of evaluations of UNICEF, and was consultant to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on performance measurement.
He was a staff member of the United Nations Secretariat for thirty years, starting as a technical assistance expert in evaluation of agrarian reform programs and in his last ten years as Deputy Director of the Division for the Advancement of Women, responsible for managing support to negotiations leading up to the Fourth World Conference on Women including involvement of NGOs. He has taught and written extensively on international governance issues, including governing the Internet, where he has been a member of the Internet Governance Project, and effective management of international arms control verification regimes. He is co-author of a book on the Elimination of Weapons of Mass Destruction: Prospects for Effective International Verification, published by Palgrave in March 2005, Invisible Governance: International Secretariats in Global Politics published by Kumarian Press in January, 2007 and Internet Governance: The New Frontier of Global Institutions by Routledge in 2008. He analyzes the General Assembly in the Annual Review of UN Affairs, published by Oxford University Press. He was an Adjunct Professor of Public Administration at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Administration at New York University and later was Professor of International Relations at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University. He is an editor-in-chief of the Journal of International Organizations Studies. He has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
