New People and a Renewed Commitment to CGD’s US Development Policy Agenda

With fundamental questions being raised these days about the nature and value of US foreign assistance, it is all the more critical that the Center for Global Development continues to play a leadership role in bringing evidence and analysis to the US policy agenda. That’s why I’m so pleased to announce three new hires that will enable us to up our game across the board and move into critical new areas of US policy.

Jeremy Konyndyk will join CGD in April as a senior policy fellow following his tenure as director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance at USAID. Jeremy led the US government’s humanitarian responses to a vast array of crises, including the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the Nepal earthquake, the crises in Iraq and Syria, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, and the resurgent conflict in South Sudan. He currently serves as well on the World Health Organization's Independent Oversight and Advisory Board for emergency response, and served previously on the independent advisory group that helped WHO to design its post-Ebola emergency response reforms. In short, Jeremy knows crisis response, and he comes to CGD with a trove of ideas for how improve US and global efforts in diverse humanitarian settings. More broadly, Jeremy will be helping to guide our thinking about USAID, global health emergencies, and new work on the national security-development nexus.

Nancy Lee joins CGD as a visiting fellow bringing deep and varied experience in the development policy field. Nancy was most recently the Deputy CEO of the Millennium Challenge Corporation and prior to that was the General Manager (CEO) of the Multilateral Investment Fund at the Inter-American Development Bank. She previously was a highly respected US Treasury official, serving at senior levels across Democratic and Republican administrations. Nancy’s work will focus on the private sector development agenda and the range of actors and instruments (US and non-US) that seek to promote this agenda.

John Hurley will join CGD in April as a visiting policy fellow, on sabbatical from the US Treasury. John has served as the Treasury Department’s director for international debt and development policy and has represented the US government in various development settings, including the G20’s development working group, IFAD, and the EBRD. He was the lead US negotiator for the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the 2015 Financing for Development conference. In addition to informing our work on the US government’s interagency process for development, John will be examining debt policy issues and trends in developing country debt sustainability.