Announcing a New Counselor to the Agency
Dear Colleagues,
As an Agency focused on improving lives overseas, it is critical for USAID to have an experienced and empowered Foreign Service leadership voice in USAID/Washington’s Front Office. The Counselor to the Agency provides guidance and direction on a broad range of policy, management, and operational issues facing the Agency, especially those that are top priorities or sensitive in nature. Chris Milligan has been passionately devoted to the Agency, and I have greatly appreciated his counsel. We are grateful that Chris decided to stay through the transition to help ensure continuity in the Front Office. In November 2021, after more than 31 years of service at USAID, Chris decided to retire.
I am pleased to announce that beginning in October of 2022, Clinton White will serve as our Counselor to the Agency. Clinton is incredibly well-placed to take on this important role, bringing almost 20 years of experience at USAID to the job. Over the last decade, Clinton served as the Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Bureau for Management and Senior Development Advisor in Libya, and currently he serves as the USAID Representative to Barbados, Eastern and Southern Caribbean, where he has led regional efforts to build resilience from increasingly powerful storms, counter HIV/AIDS and Zika, and help steer young people toward opportunity and away from crime and violence.
Clinton also has led the way in forging partnerships between USAID and our nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities, helping us inspire young, diverse students to take up the discipline of development. He pioneered an internship program to connect students from Alcorn State University with the Barbados’ Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology to study environmental impacts. Earlier this year, he also launched a digital literacy program for young people in St. Lucia that connects the island nation’s Ministry of Education with experts at Tuskegee University.
Throughout his time in the Caribbean, and in posts as Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Bureau for Management and Senior Development Advisor in Libya, Clinton has distinguished himself as a thoughtful, inclusive leader and strategic thinker, earning him the Distinguished Presidential Award in 2019, which is reserved for 1 percent of the members of the Senior Foreign Service and the Senior Executive Service. I am thrilled that Clinton has agreed to join us in the Front Office and eager for his arrival.
As Clinton’s appointment will start in October 2022, I am also pleased to share that Ken Yamashita has agreed to come out of retirement to serve as interim Counselor until Clinton can join the Front Office. Ken retired in 2016 after more than 20 years of service at USAID, including as Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Asia Bureau and in leadership roles in USAID Missions in Afghanistan, Colombia, and elsewhere. We are currently onboarding Ken and look forward to welcoming him back in mid-January. We are so grateful he has answered this call to serve again.
I am looking forward to both Clinton’s and Ken’s stewardship as Counselor to the Agency and ask you to join me in welcoming them to these new, essential roles.
—Administrator Samantha Power
Any questions concerning this notice may be directed to:
— Gideon Maltz, Chief of Staff, AID/A, 202-712-4040