Ambassador Robin Sanders D’10 will have a new title when she attends the Concordia Summit at the United Nations this month. The former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and Republic of Congo and CEO of a Washington advocacy initiative focused on Africa will attend the annual conference in New York as the Rooney International Visiting Scholar from Robert Morris University.

Sanders, who earned her doctorate from RMU, gave the graduate commencement speech in 2011, and is a member of the university’s Board of Trustees, said she looks forward to sharing her experiences from the summit with students as this semester’s resident of Rooney House on the Moon Township campus.

The Rooney International Visiting Scholar Program broadens the global perspective of Robert Morris University by offering international scholars the opportunity to spend a semester in residence on campus. Rooney Scholars can teach a course, deliver presentations and guest lectures, and collaborate with faculty on joint research projects.

Besides her observations from the annual Concordia Summit, which focuses on worldwide challenges and development goals, Sanders says she will try to convey to students what she has learned in an eventful career. That career includes working overseas as a career diplomat and then on development, training, and human rights issues since starting the FEEEDS Advocacy Initiative.

“If you want to consider yourself globally engaged, you can’t do that without having a context of the world today,” she says.

Besides her time as an ambassador in two countries and the Economic Community of West African States, Sanders also served as a director for Africa at the National Security Council at the White House and as deputy commandant at the National Defense University’s Eisenhower College in Washington, where she taught – as a diplomat – national security studies. As CEO of FEEEDS, Sanders focuses on developing world issues. She estimates she visits the African continent and other developing world areas at least three times a year, consulting, training entrepreneurs, serving as an official election observer, or being part of a human rights delegation. Her recent book, “The Rise of Africa’s Small and Medium Size Enterprises,” looks at the impact that small businesses have on encouraging job creation and growing the middle class.

“Small businesses really provide the crux of American employment, so Africans have done and are doing the same for Africa,” Sanders says.

Besides her time on the Board of Trustees and now as Rooney Scholar, Sanders also has been generous to Robert Morris University through her Ambassador Robin Renee Sanders Endowment in Honor of Geneva Sanders, started in 2018. The endowment has already supported two RMU students completing summer internships at the African Leadership Academy in South Africa.

“I feel like the university has given me so much,” she says. “It’s my way of giving back.”