[7] Radelet began his career in international development in 1981 when he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Western Samoa with his wife, Carrie Hessler-Radelet.
[10] Radelet joined the Georgetown faculty in 2012 after serving as the Chief Economist of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)[11] where he worked with former Administrator Rajiv Shah on the launch of Feed the Future, an initiative focusing on agricultural production and farming communities.
[14] Radelet served as an economic adviser to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia from 2005–17, and worked in a similar role for the Government of Malawi from 2012 to 2014.
He has served on the advisory council for the Millennium Campus Network, The ONE Campaign (2005-2009), the Commission on Weak States and National Security (2003), the United Nations Task Force on Global Poverty Reduction (2003), the UNDP Human Development Report (2003), the Asian Development Bank Poverty Reduction Strategy (2003), Merck Incorporated’s Vaccines Advisory Board (2003-2006), and the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs Global Agriculture Division (2013–17).
In a review of his book The Great Surge, Bono, lead singer of U2 and co-founder of The ONE Campaign and (RED), stated: "With his typical care and detail, Steve describes humanity’s greatest hits over the last twenty years".