Author Archive | Ven Suresh

Samantha Power was sworn into office as the 19th Administrator of USAID on May 3, 2021.

In leading the world’s premier international development agency and its global staff of over 10,000 people, Power will focus on helping the United States respond to four interconnected challenges: the COVID-19 pandemic and the development gains it has imperiled; climate change; conflict and humanitarian crises; and democratic backsliding. Power will also ensure that USAID enhances its longstanding leadership in areas including food security, education, women’s empowerment, and global health. Additionally, Power is the first USAID Administrator to be a member of the National Security Council, where she will ensure that development plays a critical role in America’s responses to a range of economic, humanitarian, and geopolitical issues.

Prior to joining the Biden-Harris Administration, Power was the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the William D. Zabel Professor of Practice in Human Rights at Harvard Law School. From 2013 to 2017, Power served in the Obama-Biden Administration as the 28th US Permanent Representative to the United Nations. During her time at the UN, Power rallied countries to combat the Ebola epidemic, ratify the Paris climate agreement, and develop new international law to cripple ISIS’s financial networks. She worked to negotiate and implement the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals, helped catalyze bold international commitments to care for refugees, and advocated to secure the release of political prisoners, defend civil society from growing repression, and protect the rights of women and girls.

From 2009 to 2013, Power served on the National Security Council staff as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. At the NSC, she advised the Obama-Biden Administration on issues such as democracy promotion, UN reform, LGBTQ+ and women’s rights, atrocity prevention, and the fights against human trafficking and global corruption.

An immigrant from Ireland, Power began her career as a war correspondent in Bosnia, and went on to report from places including Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. She was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and has been recognized as one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People,” one of Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers,” and by Forbes as one of the “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.” Power is an author and editor of multiple books, and the recipient of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction.

Power earned a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Biographies of Speakers at UAA 2021 Annual General Meeting

Sara Bennett PhD is Professor and Associate Chair in the International Health Department, and Director of the Health Systems Program, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. With training in politics and economics, Sara is broadly interested in health policy and systems in low and middle income countries having studied issues in health financing, health markets, health worker motivation, and the effects of development assistance. Her research has also addressed institutional capacity development, health systems governance, and the use of evidence in policy and decision-making. Sara is currently conducting research that explores the role of the private sector in India’s Covid-19 response, as well as a participating in a study that seeks to identify policies and system features that have enabled countries to sustain essential health services during the pandemic.

Sara’s career encompasses both academic and policy positions. She played a significant role in the development of the field of Health Policy and Systems Research being former Vice-Chair and Chair of Health Systems Global (2012-16) editor of Health Policy and Planning (2009-15), and Executive Director of the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research at the World Health Organization (2006-08). Sara is strongly committed to bridging the worlds of academia and practice, and building institutional capacity for health research internationally. She graduated from Oxford (MA), Cambridge (MPhil) and London School of Economics (PhD). You can follow Sara on Twitter @saracbennett

Mukesh Chawla, PhD, Adviser, Health, Nutrition and Population at the World Bank, has worked for over twenty-five years with governments and international development partners in Europe, Asia and Africa on a variety of health sector issues, including design and diffusion of complex innovations in health, identification of innovative business solutions to address systemic and process issues in the health sector, and economics of health. He led the development of the Pandemic Emergency Financing (PEF) facility, which provided surge funds to low-income countries for early response to major disease outbreaks through a unique pandemic insurance mechanism and managed its operations until the facility closed in April 2021. His current area of interest and responsibility is helping countries get better prepared to respond immediately and effectively to disease outbreaks that have the potential of assuming pandemic proportions. He has written extensively on the role of markets and market-like institutions in the creation of incentives that strengthen health systems, fiscal space for health, innovations in health financing, design of health sector reforms and economics of aging populations. Prior to joining the Bank, he held a research faculty position at Harvard University, Boston, USA. Before that, as member of the Indian Administrative Service in India, he held several key government positions between 1980 and 1998. He attended St. Stephen’s College and Delhi School of Economics, Delhi, India, and Boston University, Boston, USA.

Amanda Glassman is executive vice president and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and also serves as chief executive officer of CGD Europe. Her research focuses on priority-setting, resource allocation and value for money in global health, as well as data for development. Prior to her current position, she served as director for global health policy at the Center from 2010 to 2016, and has more than 25 years of experience working on health and social protection policy and programs in Latin America and elsewhere in the developing world.

Prior to joining CGD, Glassman was principal technical lead for health at the Inter-American Development Bank, where she led policy dialogue with member countries, designed the results-based grant program Salud Mesoamerica 2015 and served as team leader for conditional cash transfer programs such as Mexico’s Oportunidades and Colombia’s Familias en Accion. From 2005-2007, Glassman was deputy director of the Global Health Financing Initiative at Brookings and carried out policy research on aid effectiveness and domestic financing issues in the health sector in low-income countries. Before joining the Brookings Institution, Glassman designed, supervised and evaluated health and social protection loans at the Inter-American Development Bank and worked as a Population Reference Bureau Fellow at the US Agency for International Development. Glassman holds a MSc from the Harvard School of Public Health and a BA from Brown University, has published on a wide range of health and social protection finance and policy topics, and is editor and coauthor of the books What’s In, What’s Out: Designing Benefits for Universal Health Coverage (Center for Global Development, 2017), Millions Saved: New Cases of Proven Success in Global Health (Center for Global Development 2016), From Few to Many: A Decade of Health Insurance Expansion in Colombia (IDB and Brookings 2010), and The Health of Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (World Bank 2001).

Madhumita Gupta served as Mission Economist, Senior Advisor for Science, Technology, Innovation and Partnership, and Director for the Office of Governance, Education and Strategic Activities at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), India.   She has a wide canvas of experience across several development sectors and extensive field experience in developing countries, including large scale field surveys.  She has served with the World Bank, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, as well as consulted for the Organization for American States and the Danish International Development Agency.  In the early 1990s, Ms. Gupta was first hand witness to and supported, from the World Bank and USAID platforms, India’s unprecedented economic liberalization efforts that led India to slowly emerge as a market-oriented economy.  Subsequently, she worked on several structural adjustment programs, including on India’s trade and fiscal management reforms.  During the latter part of her career at USAID, her focus turned more and more towards sustainability and scalability of development efforts where ‘governance and institutional arrangements’ became a focal point.   Ms. Gupta also has extensive private sector experience.  She has an MBA from the George Washington University and an B.Sc in Economics.

Irene Koek is Associate Vice President and Global Health practice lead at Save the Children/U.S.  She joined Save the Children in late July 2020 after more than 30 years with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Ms. Koek began her career in family planning/reproductive health, and subsequently served in a number of leadership positions at USAID including as the Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator and acting Assistant Administrator for Global Health. She led the development of USAID’s infectious disease strategy in the late 1990s, and helped start up the President’s Malaria Initiative and USAID’s tuberculosis and neglected tropical diseases programs, and later served as USAID’s Global Health Security Agenda lead.  From 2010-2014 she was the Director of the Health Office in USAID/Indonesia. Ms. Koek has worked extensively with international partners, including serving as the Chair of the Stop TB Partnership Coordinating Board from 2005-2009 and representing USAID on the Board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance for several years.

Jeremy Konyndyk serves as Executive Director of the USAID COVID-19 Task Force and a Senior Advisor to the USAID Administrator. He oversees the development and implementation of USAID’s COVID-19 response efforts, comprising resources approaching $10 billion that support over 100 countries suffering the devastating effects of the virus. He leads the agency’s engagement on COVID-19 with foreign government counterparts, partner organizations, and global response institutions including Gavi/COVAX, the World Health Organization, and the Global Fund. He rejoined USAID in January 2021.

Mr. Konyndyk served in a previous appointment at USAID as the Director of USAID’s Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) from September 2013 – January 2017. As Director of the lead federal office responsible for coordinating the US Government’s response to international disasters, Mr. Konyndyk oversaw OFDA’s global programs and responses to an average of 70 disasters in 50 countries every year. During his tenure there he led the US Government’s humanitarian responses to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the Nepal earthquake, the Iraq crisis, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, the resurgent conflict in South Sudan, and the ongoing war inside Syria, among other crises.

Mr. Konyndyk also serves on the Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee for the World Health Organization’s Programme on Health Emergencies.

From 2017 to 2021, Mr. Konyndyk was a Senior Policy Fellow at the Center for Global Development where he co-created the COVID-Local initiative to develop a Frontline Guide for use by city and community leaders to organize and fight COVID in their communities. He also led CGD research initiatives on pandemic preparedness, humanitarian effectiveness and reform, and U.S. development policy. Earlier in his career he worked for NGOs including Mercy Corps and the American Refugee Committee, and served as a Refugee Officer at the US State Department.

Mr. Konyndyk holds a Bachelor’s degree from Calvin College and a Master’s from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

John Norris  is the Deputy Director for Policy and Strategic Insight at the Gates Foundation with a focus on the emerging trends most likely to impact the foundation’s programs. John has served in a number of senior roles in government, international institutions, and nonprofits. In 2014, John was appointed by President Barack Obama to the President’s Global Development Council, a body charged with advising the administration on effective development practices. John previously served as  Executive Director of the  Sustainable Security and Peace-building Initiative at the Center for American Progress and as Executive Director of the Enough Project.  He has also held senior positions at the United Nations, the State Department, and the International Crisis Group.  He worked for USAID in the 1990s, both as a speechwriter for Brian Atwood and as a field disaster expert.  In 2014 he wrote a series for Devex on “USAID: A History of US Foreign Assistance”, a review of the tenures of the 16 USAID Administrators.  In addition to The Enduring Struggle, he is the author of several books, including Mary McGrory: The First Queen of Journalism and the  Disaster Gypsies , a memoir of his work in the field of emergency relief. He has published commentary in scores of outlets, including The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal , and elsewhere. He has a graduate degree in public administration.

James Andrew Bever has served for 35 years as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). He retired with the U.S. Senior Foreign Service rank of Career Minister in mid-2017, after acting as USAID Assistant Administrator for Legislative & Public Affairs.

While with USAID, he served overseas as the Mission Director to Afghanistan, to Egypt, to the West Bank & Gaza Strip, and to Ghana, as well as in other responsibilities overseas in India, Indonesia and Pakistan.  Senior leadership assignments at HQ in Washington, D.C., included assistant to the Administrator for Iraq and for Afghanistan and Pakistan; Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Middle East; office director for U.S. foreign assistance for the New Independent Republics of the former Soviet Union, and as Faculty at the U.S. National War College and at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute.

Prior to USAID, he worked in Morocco, at SUNY Stonybrook/Brookhaven Laboratory, at the Overseas Development Council working in Sub-Saharan Africa, at the U.S. Embassy in Togo, and at the United Nations Secretariat.

Mr. Bever has a Master of Science Degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University, a Master of Science Certificate in National Security Strategy from the National War College, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics from Cornell University.  He is married and has two married sons and a grand-daughter.

Mr. Bever is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Distinguished Service Award and the USAID Administrator Distinguished Career Service Award.

Hilda M. Arellano was the Director of the Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative (SINSI) at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School from 2014 to 2016 following her retirement from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).  Her last assignment for USAID was as the Senior Development Advisor at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute.  In August 2013 Ms. Arellano returned from Afghanistan where she served at U.S. Embassy Kabul as the Coordinating Director for Development and Economic Affairs.  For this position she held Ambassadorial rank.

Before joining Embassy Kabul, she served as Counselor at USAID in Washington DC, and prior to that as Mission Director in Egypt, Iraq, Peru, Regional Center – Budapest, and Ecuador. Ms. Arellano joined USAID in 1987 and her first assignments were to Guatemala, Bolivia and Ecuador.  She served as Deputy Mission Director in Guatemala and Bolivia.

Before joining USAID, Ms. Arellano lived and worked in Latin America for 17 years. In 1971 Ms. Arellano joined the United Nations Volunteer Program and was posted to Peru and Bolivia for three years working on credit projects for rural women.  She subsequently did consulting and project management work for the World Bank, the UN and the Organization of American States.

A graduate of Cornell University with a BA in Political Science, Ms. Arellano has a Master of Arts in Political Science from the University of Texas at Austin. She also received her Masters of Arts in Teaching from Antioch College.

A native of Westfield, New Jersey, Ms. Arellano and her husband, Jorge, have four children and seven grandchildren.

Ambassador Earl Anthony Wayne is a Distinguished Diplomat in Residence teaching at American University’s School of International Service.  He is also a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Co-Chair of its Mexico Institute Advisory Board.  He is a Senior Non-Resident Advisor at the Atlantic Council and at the Center for Security and International Studies and serves on the Board of the American Academy of Diplomacy.  Wayne writes, speaks and consults on a wide range of topics.

Ambassador Wayne served as a US diplomat from 1975 to 2015, including as the U.S. Ambassador to Argentina (2006-2009), the Coordinating Director for Development and Economic Affairs and Deputy U.S. Ambassador in Kabul, Afghanistan (2009-2011), and the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico (2011- 15).  He was the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs (EB) under three Secretaries of State (2000-2006). The U.S. Senate confirmed him as a Career Ambassador, the highest rank in the US Foreign Service, in 2010.

He received multiple honors during his government service, including the 2017 Director General’s Cup for the Foreign Service and the 2015 Cobb Award for Initiative and Success in Trade Development.  Wayne received an MPA from Harvard University’s JFK School of Government, MAs from Princeton University and Stanford University, and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley.

Wayne’s webpage, www.eawayne.com, includes articles, talks and interviews.

February 2021

• Name
• Last position held with USAID, hiring authority and date of retirement or resignation
• Examples of contributions to UAA or its goals
• Brief statement to why you wish to join the Board

Following up on the PPL briefing for the UAA on April 14, this notice is to solicit interest of UAA members in contributing on a voluntary basis their knowledge, expertise and perspectives to USAID’s Bureau of Policy, Program and Learning in four areas of mutual interest:

• Building links between UAA members and Mission needs, i.e., serving as a “senior advisor” to a Mission on issues as they go through the Program Cycle or in a specialized discipline. Please indicate a Mission (or region) you would feel comfortable “teaming up with” or a discipline on which you would provide advisory services (e.g., health, education, democracy and governance, food security, etc.)
• Mentoring of BS 02s (Program Officers).
• Advisory services on policy statements and guidance. Please indicate particular discipline or area of interest.
• Contributing to making evaluations more useful to Missions. Please indicate which discipline in which you have specialized expertise.  This may include reviewing evaluations in a particular discipline and drawing lessons learned which may be of general use in project or activity design.

UAA members volunteering their services would do so in accordance with the Gratuitous Services Agreement (GSA) template (attached).  A more precise description of the services to be rendered is to be done in conjunction with the relevant USAID unit.   In certain instances, a Non-Disclosure Agreement would be required for access to non-public and confidential information.

Please specify your interest in volunteering in one or more of the above categories by emailing UAA Development Issues Committee Co-Chairs Stephen Giddings (sgiddings5@gmail.com) and Stephen Haykin (smhaykin@yahoo.com) by May 14, 2021.

Purpose: The Alumni of the Year awards, granted to UAA contributing members, are intended to recognize and celebrate new paths taken by USAID alumni to provide service to their communities and to make lasting contributions to others at home and abroad.

What are we looking for? The UAA will continue the premise, began in 2014, that one award would go to someone whose contributions were mainly domestic and another one to a nominee whose contributions were primarily overseas. Depending on the nature of the nominations, we will be flexible and may honor more than one person or none in each of these two categories in any given year.

Since 2014, this award has honored fifteen outstanding alumni whose contributions have inspired us all. Many other alumni deserve recognition, and the UAA Awards Committee needs your help in identifying individuals whose post-USAID activities are truly exemplary and highlight the quality of our alumni community. In response to the many positive comments and suggestions by members in the past evaluations of the annual general meeting, we are pleased to continue the signature Alumni of the Year award criteria and recipient eligibility.

The list below provides examples of service that are appropriate for consideration. Nominations, however, are not limited to these example categories.

• Service with nongovernmental organizations and other groups (for profit or nonprofit) that work closely with communities with special needs, at home or abroad, or both. Examples may include legal services or advocacy for disadvantaged groups, foster parenting, medical service in underserved areas, etc.
• Service with groups that promote education (at any level) or the arts and sciences (e.g., museums, community theater, music appreciation, science fairs, etc.).
• Support for civic programs of any kind (e.g., Scouts movement or projects promoted by groups such as the Lions, Rotary, NAACP, or similar).
• Leadership excellence, including contributions to intellectual development and implementation (e.g., for sustained extraordinary achievement, dedication and passion in a leadership role).
• Service by alumni, including retirees and their spouses or partners, who are UAA members and actively support contributions in furtherance of social and economic development and humanitarian relief at home or abroad.

Most frequently, these services are provided on a voluntary basis. Nevertheless, we will not exclude a nomination for an individual who is paid for the service he/she renders as long as that service goes beyond the expected contribution and is not simply a continuation of the work the nominee was doing prior to separation from USAID. The post-USAID contribution should reflect innovative service likely to leave a long-lasting contribution to the community and people being served.

Who can nominate? Anyone in the UAA registered alumni community may nominate a candidate for the award. This includes registered alumni, contributing members, and members of the UAA Executive Committee. Only Awards Committee members are ineligible to nominate candidates. The Awards Committee will take upon itself the task of verifying the facts contained in the nominations (including self-nominations) that stand out and merit further consideration.

Nomination format: Alumni interested in nominating someone (or in self-nomination) are asked to prepare a brief description of what the individual has been doing since leaving USAID and describe in one or two pages (maximum; less is preferable) the innovative or transformative service of the nominee that merits recognition. The nomination should describe the impact of the contribution and why it might be inspiring to others, particularly the USAID alumni community. Keep it simple and brief.

When and where to send nominations: The Awards Committee will accept nominations, beginning now (April 2021) until July 31, 2020. Nominations received after that date cannot be considered. Send nominations electronically to: awards@usaidalumni.org.

The Awards Committee will review nominations and make final decisions in August and September for the winners. The award winners will be notified in advance and will be announced and publicly recognized at the Annual General Meeting on October 29, 2021. The UAA also will feature some of the nominees, including those who were not selected, in the monthly UAA Newsletter and in the Alumni Profiles section of the UAA website.

We encourage everyone to consider nominating (or self-nominating) someone you know who is deserving of this recognition.

UAA 10^th Annual Summer Picnic

Saturday, September 12, 2020, 4:00-5:30 PM Eastern Time

Participants list