I lead strategic positioning and proposal development for a $660m pipeline covering key environment & infrastructure opportunities in WASH, energy, and climate. As a Business Development Director, I partner with senior leaders and technical experts from across DT Global to set strategy, lead partnerships, recruit key personnel, support information-gathering and scoping, and manage business development efforts from identification to proposal submission.

Served as the Senior Program Manager for a large, +$50m USAID irrigation infrastructure and watershed management activity in Afghanistan, managing a team of two program managers and supporting the turnaround of an underperforming program by driving technical excellence and rigorous compliance to client and internal standards, executing key staffing changes, and communicating activity-level improvements to the client, resulting in significant CPAR score improvements and a positive project close-out under challenging circumstances. I also supported business development efforts, including a successful WASH proposal for South Sudan, as a cost preparer, management writer, and proposal reviewer.

Applied business development, project management, and operations expertise to support international development clients, train their teams, win new opportunities, and implement projects.Results include delivering improved project management tools for an international development company, streamlining internal operations forms and processes for an innovative edtech venture, and concluding a comprehensive service design assessment based on user interviews with 20+ government and private sector stakeholders in Ghana. Recruited over 20 senior technical personnel and five chiefs of party, contributing to $50m in awarded grants and contracts, and developed cost proposals for $45m in USAID contract opportunities.

Introduced human-centered design tools and techniques including personas, empathy maps, and customer journey maps, to reimagine proposal development and project management cycles within a service design framework, contributing to over $60m in new awards and nearly $500m worth of proposals submitted in 2018.Facilitated several trainings and workshops for staff and partners, including a course on project management for international development, a 4-day management workshop for Pact’s partners in Ethiopia, and two annual team retreats for 30+ colleagues.Led project management for Pact’s $40m global awards portfolio in a matrix management structure, managing and supporting distributed teams based in Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, South Africa, and Indonesia. Backstopped Pact’s Ethiopia country office and served as acting country director, overseeing a large portfolio in the health and governance sectors.

Served as the lead product designer and information architect for an in-house contract management web application that empowered Kaizen to quickly issue small contracts to technical service providers in compliance with complex government regulations and requirements. Conducted user interviews and mapped business processes, presented concepts and prototypes to US Government client, built stakeholder buy-in and signoff, and managed software development subcontract using Agile principles and methodologies. The solution significantly reduced contract lifecycle costs and reduced administrative bottlenecks. As of 2018, over 150 technical services contracts valued at over $1.5m were procured and delivered by nearly 40 firms through this new system, directly contributing to the success and scalability of innovative new agtech technologies and business models in low-resource settings like rural India and Bangladesh.Additionally, I provided backstopping, project management, and technical support for a range of domestic and international projects, including the Ethiopia Local Capacity Development program and an innovative entrepreneurship grant program in the West Bank and Israel that brought teams of Israeli and Palestinian innovators together to launch and scale technology startups. Managed teams of program coordinators and associates to achieve project management and new business development objectives. Worked directly with company leadership to develop company operations and project implementation processes and procedures. Actively supported an extensive range of new business development efforts across a number of technical sectors, focusing on capacity development and business-led innovation.

Home office manager for teams of up to 9 staff supporting challenging, high-value awards in complex environments like Libya, Afghanistan, Haiti, and Ghana. Borrowing from Scrum, introduced daily standups and project management sprints to ensure that our home office teams delivered the highest level of support for staff in the field. Led the startup of new venture in Ghana, re-establishing the company’s presence after a 5-year absence, hiring the first team members, setting up operations, training the management team, and facilitating a launch workshop.Regularly supported proposals in a variety of roles, including several stints as proposal coordinator keeping 20+ people across multiple teams, business units, and departments on track for 30-60 day proposal cycles. Conducted fact-finding trips in Afghanistan and Guinea, interviewing government and private sector stakeholders to support service design. I regularly supported complex internal and external negotiations with stakeholders and partners, winning over $15m in new contracts.In 2011-2012 served in Kabul, Kandahar, and Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan, as the expatriate operations manager for the $101 million Regional Afghan Municipalities Program for Urban Populations (RAMP UP) – South program, supervising a distributed and diverse team of over 35 staff.

Key team player linking staff from diverse business units to deliver several multi-million dollar proposals for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Facilitated proposal design sprints to develop strategy and provide meaningful feedback to technical writers and made major writing contributions to all proposal efforts, including writing management plans, personnel sections, project descriptions, resumes, and corporate capability statements. Supported recruiting teams in identifying, interviewing, and recruiting over 150 candidates for various proposal efforts. Coordinated the winning bid for a $26 million local and rural development initiative in Central Asia.

Managed a team of six regional risk analysts and research assistants in producing analytical reports for major corporations with international operations. Conducted user interviews and collected and analyzed survey and site usage data to lead the redesign of the company’s flagship Worldwide Advisory Intelligence Service (WAIS). This web application and daily email briefing served C-level decision-makers and risk management professionals at large multinational corporations. Along with new quality control standards and training regional analysts on open source intelligence collection, analysis, and reporting the site redesign contributed to a 35% increase in subscriptions in 2007-2008, exceeding our business development objectives.

Backstopped international development contracts with multiple clients, including USAID, the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, and U.S. Trade and Development Agency. Provided home office technical support and wrote the final technical report for a trade assessment mission in Morocco. Led business development efforts and submitted proposals for over US$16m in new business opportunities, including the winning bid for a US$600,000 pension reform project in Cambodia and a US$6m EBRD-funded financial sector project. Mobilized consultants for projects and recruited international experts for proposal efforts. Developed marketing materials such as corporate qualifications and project one-pagers tailored to specific opportunities and clients. Built a basic CRM to track business opportunities.

The Wilson Quarterly is one of the country’s premier journals providing on-the-ground reporting, and thought-provoking perspectives through carefully curated essays and multimedia pieces. Conducted primary and secondary research for the Winter 2005 edition and wrote summaries for the publications review of periodicals. Built database to track books and periodicals submitted for review.

Served in Primary Reserve infantry regiment with progressively greater leadership responsibilities, including section second-in-command, acting section commander, and platoon weapons detachment commander. Service included four rotations with the prestigious Ceremonial Guard, extensive combat training, and pre-deployment peacekeeping training for NATO mission to Kosovo.