Previously he was the Director of the Global Affairs Program at the International Relations Center and the Co-Director of Foreign Policy in Focus, a progressive think tank on U.S. foreign policy and international affairs. He has worked at a series of nonprofit think tanks since the early 1990s, including the Institute for Food and Development Policy and Partners in Health. His research, writing, and advocacy work has focused on issues of U.S. foreign policy in East and Southeast Asia, the politics of international financial institutions and multilateralism, the political economy of democracy and development, the political economy of land and water rights in Ghana and the Philippines, the politics of sanitation, and rights-based approaches to development.