Patrick Gaspard
president of the Open Society Foundations
Patrick Hubert Gaspard (born July 26, 1967) is an American former diplomat who served as president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.
A noted Democratic Party leader and strategist, Gaspard served as executive director of the Democratic National Committee from 2011 to 2013. Gaspard served as United States Ambassador to South Africa from 2013 to 2016. Prior to his appointment to lead CAP, Gaspard served as president of the Open Society Foundations from 2017 to 2020.
Early life
Patrick Hubert Gaspard was born in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, to parents from Haiti. His parents had moved to Congo at the behest of revolutionary leader Patrice Lumumba, who urged French-speaking professionals to move to the country.
Gaspard moved with his parents to the United States when he was three years old, and he was raised in New York City. Gaspard graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School and attended Columbia University from 1984 to 1987.
Career
New York City politics
Gaspard's political career began in New York City, where he worked on Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign. In the 1989 New York City mayoral election, Gaspard worked on David Dinkins' successful campaign.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Patrick Gaspard” as president of the Open Society Foundations. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7146556. VIAF identifies the subject as 310623878. The Library of Congress control number is no2014108116. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1967, 2011, 2013 and 2016.
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This entry incorporates text from “Patrick Gaspard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.