• Portfolio Size: $81 Million

• Countries Covered: ASEAN, Lower Mekong

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• Portfolio Size: $287 Million

• Countries Covered: 21 West and Central African Countries

• Key Accomplishments:

  • Led a 13-member program office managing a $281M regional portfolio, coordinating investments across multiple countries and sectors—demonstrating large-scale operational leadership and regional strategy execution under complex governance conditions.

  • Oversaw a high-growth portfolio in Cameroon, scaling from $10M to $180M, while supporting crisis response and conflict-sensitive initiatives.

  • Directed implementation of a flagship youth leadership and entrepreneurship program, supporting over 1,000 participants across West Africa.

• Oversaw a $180 million emergency response portfolio for Sudan and South Sudan, including 15 funding agreements, and successfully secured an additional $39 million to expand support for refugees during a major humanitarian crisis

• Served as a budget advisor during the presidential transition, helping senior leadership shape funding priorities and prepare materials for Congress and the State Department

• Worked with software and policy teams to design new systems for tracking project performance and spending across multiple international programs, improving how decisions were made with real-time data

• Advised leadership on U.S. and international education policy trends, providing analysis that informed strategic decisions and program positioning

• Helped design and implement internal data systems to track policy changes and program outcomes, improving access to information across global teams

Project Coordinator, RISE Project 2011-2012

At the Society for Women’s Health Research, I worked on a project exploring how major scientific awards influence the direction of innovation. I maintained and improved a global database of high-value prizes, streamlining the update process and making the system easier to use and more effective for researchers. It wasn’t just about managing data, it was about unlocking insights. The improved system became a trusted resource for analysts and policymakers around the world, helping them understand how to design awards that actually drive bold, groundbreaking research. It was a small project with big implications, and I was proud to help bring clarity and momentum to an area that often gets overlooked.

With support from the Tinker-Walker Fellowship and American University’s Graduate Student Research Grant, I joined the BaGa Maidi community in Manthe, South Africa, to conduct action research on grassroots development. The community was leading innovative efforts to invest natural resource revenues into local priorities, and I worked directly with traditional leaders to carry out a participatory needs assessment. When early childhood education emerged as a top concern, I helped train and organize a volunteer team to create and distribute a Setswana-language early learning handbook for parents, grandparents, and preschools. The handbook was tailored to the community’s needs and cultural context, and the initiative drew national attention, including visits from key government ministries.