John Uniack Davis is the Senior Director, Strategic Leadership Team, at Mercy Corps. He recently completed over seven years of service as Helen Keller International's Regional Director for West Africa. He was also previously CARE's Country Director for Turkey, working on the Syria humanitarian response, and served for five-plus years as CARE's Country Director for Madagascar. Before that, he was a CARE deputy regional director for southern and West Africa, based in Accra, Ghana, and served as a CARE focal point on democracy and governance. From 2002 to 2006, he was CARE’s assistant country director for Mali. He also previously served as the development assistance coordinator for the U.S. Government in Niger and received a State Department Superior Honor Award for his work in that position. John has done consulting for a variety of international organizations, including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the United Nations Capital Development Fund, the Netherlands Development Organization (SNV), and several non-governmental organizations. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Michigan State University as well as an M.S. in agricultural economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and has written a number of scholarly and popular articles on subjects as diverse as democratization, aid policy, HIV/AIDS prevention, and the economics of farm worker safety. His international career began when he served for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Burkina Faso in the mid-1980s.Specialties: Humanitarian response, international development leadership and management, program design, monitoring and evaluation, applied research, democracy and governance.