John Prendergast

Co-Chair of the Enough Project

John Prendergast is Co-Chair of the Enough Project, an initiative to end genocide and crimes against humanity. During the Clinton administration, John was involved in a number of peace processes in Africa while he was director of African Affairs at the National Security Council and special advisor at the Department of State. John has also worked for members of Congress, the United Nations, humanitarian aid agencies, human rights organizations, and think tanks, as well as having been a youth counselor and basketball coach.

He has authored eight books on Africa, including Not on Our Watch, a New York Times bestseller and NAACP non-fiction book of the year that he co-authored with actor Don Cheadle. John is now working on two new books for publication by Random House, one that focuses on his 25 years in the Big Brother program, and the other on human rights and peace activism.

John has helped produce a number of documentaries and he consults on scripts for movies and for television shows, including an episode of NBC’s "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit," which focused on child soldiers. He also has taken a number of television news programs to Africa, including "Nightline" and "The Lehrer Newshour," and has been part of a series of episodes of CBS' "60 Minutes" which earned an Emmy Award for Best Continuing News Coverage. With NBA stars Tracy McGrady, Baron Davis, and Derek Fisher, he co-founded the Darfur Dream Team Sister Schools Program, which connects schools in the United States with schools in the Darfurian refugee camps. He also helped create the Raise Hope for Congo Campaign aimed at ending violence against women and girls in the Congo, and is currently helping to produce a series of videos highlighting the issue of Congo’s conflict minerals.

His op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the International Herald Tribune, and he has been profiled in Vanity Fair, Men's Vogue, Entertainment Weekly, GQ Magazine, Oprah Magazine, Capitol File, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. John travels regularly to Africa's war zones on fact-finding missions, peace-making initiatives, and awareness-raising trips. He is a visiting professor at the University of San Diego and the American University in Cairo.