Washington, DC
[Remarks as Prepared]
ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: Thank you so much Monde [Muyangwa]. And thank you for always being here, and for looking out for your people, and the incredible people in this Agency. I'm delighted to be here. And I really want to thank our Chargé in Sudan Colleen Crenwelge. And Colleen, I just thank you. I appreciated in your comments your embrace of the complexity.
Yes, we're providing humanitarian assistance, but not enough. Yes, we are operating all guns blazing, but in the most complicated environment imaginable. And we really thank you for your service, and for being there, and leading a team that is dispersed. It would be a major leadership challenge, even if everybody were consolidated in one place, but it's rendered all the more complex, in light of that forced dispersal by the warring parties on the ground.
I want to join Monde in thanking Adam Schmidt, who just did an amazing job over the last year plus – his grace under pressure. I think he was days into his job when the violence broke out. And he was a relentless advocate, specifically as well for those Sudanese Foreign Service Nationals who not only been dislocated from their jobs, like the rest of our teams that were present on the ground, but in many cases have lost everything: their homes, their family photos, loved ones. It's just been an unbearable tragedy.
And for you who are out there, Sudanese colleagues, just know our hearts are with you. We know we're not getting as much in there as we need to. We know we are not succeeding diplomatically in the way that Tom Perriello and others, backed by the President even, are determined to do. But we're never going to give up on you and your country. So please, please know that.
I'm really grateful to Margaret for taking on this task. Grateful to her family: to her mother Patricia, to her husband, John Pennell, of course, a tandem USAID couple. John is our Mission Director in Georgia, facing some complexity of his own.
And I want to acknowledge a few people who are with us only in spirit today: Margaret's brother who passed away far too soon back in 2020. And Margaret's father, Victor, better known as ‘Doc from Trinidad’, an immigrant by way of Guyana, and I know just a huge influence in Margaret's life. Victor was a veterinarian for large farm animals. So, Margaret grew up on a farm outside of Trenton, New Jersey surrounded by animals: cats, chicken, cattle, a golden retriever named Jenny, a horse named Star, whom she learned to ride while in elementary school.
Her dreams of international service were inspired in part by her grandmother, Mary, traveling midwife and public health advocate in Guyana, and an advocate for women and for public health. As a child, Margaret was apparently enthralled by Mary's stories. And one night, she put down her fork at the dinner table and declared, “I want to help people in other countries.”
And she didn't waste any time, immediately beginning to learn other languages so that she could communicate with the people that she so wanted to serve. The following week, she was selected for a competitive French class and got to work perfecting her French. She then picked up Latin and Italian and even some elementary Greek, along with German, Spanish, Swedish, and Indonesian later in life. Whoa! I know they say if you learn a second language the others become easier, but I'm not sure the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh become that much easier!
From the beginning, Margaret was by all accounts fearless. Her mother recalls one incident when Margaret was in middle school, where their car was badly, badly hit from behind, causing flames to shoot up all around them. But Margaret didn't freeze. She helped her mother open the door, navigated safely through the flames, and guided the family to the side of the road. As her mother remembers, “A lot of youngsters might have been just hysterical, but Margaret was cool and calm.” This is a recurring theme.
Margaret was also figuring out how she wanted to build her international career at that time. She could, of course, follow in the footsteps of her father and her grandmother and pursue maybe a career in public health. But as Margaret saw on the other side of her family, health wasn't the only way that one could serve. Her mother Patricia worked as a university administrator at Temple University in Philadelphia, where she supported students who were some of the first in their families to attend college. Her other grandmother was a lifelong special ed teacher in public school. Margaret would often spend time in her classrooms observing her grandmother with her students, and the experience left a lasting impression. Her grandmother, she said, taught her that “everyone has something to contribute. Everyone has the right to learn and engage and be a part of society.”
Luckily, Margaret didn't have to choose between her interests. A chance encounter with a friend led her to interview with the Peace Corps, which placed her in Cameroon in the early 1990s as an English teacher, teaching English as a Foreign Language students, and as an HIV/AIDS education volunteer. Wow, that is extraordinary. She saw firsthand how important education was to preventing disease, and how schools could help communities access information that could promote public health. It was her first exposure to the power of cross sectoral work to bring about effective and lasting change.
Margaret completed a Master's in Public Health from Tulane University before eventually moving to Cote d'Ivoire to work with a USAID-funded Family Health and AIDS Project. And then, she officially joined USAID as a Foreign Service Officer.
Margaret's first couple of days at USAID were monumental. On the day she was sworn in – right here in this room on September 10, 2001, she met a handsome colleague named John Pennell. We were told you met on the first floor, but I think you've met, I fact checked, right here. Raise your hand if you were in the room at the time, because I know we have a few witnesses. Was there some electricity in the room back then that – did you all spot anything? Well, it would actually take a long time for this romance to commence. It was just – decades later, just three years ago that their lifelong friendship blossomed into a USAID romance. And it has to be said, they got married just two and a half weeks ago. It is a little surreal to be back in this room with you all, 23 years later, holding hands.
Her second day, of course, you heard me say September 10, was their first day, so September 11, 2001, her second day and the second day of others of you who were sworn in on September 10.
Margaret still remembers that day, signing her USAID medical and health insurance paperwork, when news trickled in of a plane hitting the World Trade Center. As the new Foreign Service Officers gathered around the monitor, they saw the second plane hit and were immediately told to evacuate this building. But despite the mass confusion, shock, and fear, she remembers how the next day her entire class of Foreign Service Officers was right back at work, rededicating themselves to advancing stability, mutual understanding, and human dignity around the world. As she put it, “Every single person was there. There was so much commitment to international work even at such an uncertain time.”
Margaret's own commitment has extended these 23 years. And in each of her posts, she has shown how combining multiple areas of expertise can make our work more effective. In Jamaica, she saw that, similar to Cameroon, one of the best places to educate communities about HIV/AIDS was in places where people were already receiving an education. She encouraged the Mission’s HIV/AIDS teams to work with the education staff, where together they designed school curricula and trained teachers to disseminate public health information around HIV/AIDS, one of the Mission’s first cross-sectoral efforts.
In Indonesia, Margaret knew that poor indigenous communities in the southern part of the country lacked access to good schools and quality education. These were communities that were often disconnected from their governments, as they often spoke their own languages and lacked access to infrastructure, resources, and critical services. Margaret saw an opportunity to build civic engagement and public trust in elected leaders. She teamed up with the Office of Democracy and Governance to help indigenous communities communicate their needs to the district’s education authority, and then help local officials develop curricula using local Indigenous languages, one of the first efforts of its kind throughout Indonesia.
Beyond her programmatic impact, Margaret proved herself a tremendous community builder. Her colleagues remember the lunches that she would organize for her teams, the dinners and parties at her house, the way she was always ready to listen. As Deputy Mission Director for USAID/Egypt, specifically, when the conflict in Gaza broke out in October, she earned the trust of the entire team and helped to relay the feedback, criticism, and emotions of the staff to senior leaders.
She was a fierce advocate for her local staff – winning, in fact, the annual USAID FSN Advocacy Award for her efforts. Colleagues from her first tour in Jamaica remember how Margaret gave FSNs opportunities to manage projects and lead meetings, and sent them to represent USAID in external engagements. In Egypt, she was instrumental in appointing one of the first FSNs in the Agency to lead a Mission’s health office.
And, of course, when Sudanese Foreign Service Nationals fled the spiraling violence across Sudan and in Khartoum, it was Margaret who advocated again fiercely on their behalf to bring them to safety in Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt. And she helped arrange temporary housing and school enrollments for their kids. But she also went above and beyond on the little things that help them feel cared for: setting them up with comfortable office space to come to work among colleagues; getting them access to psychosocial and emotional support from local Arabic-speaking counselors; connecting them with Egyptian Foreign Service Nationals, so that they could have people to turn to when times got tough. In the words of her boss at the time, “She recognized the humanity of the people we worked with and used her leadership and advocacy skills to get them what they needed at a time of particular crisis.”
Those connections, and the trust that she has already built with our Sudanese staff, will be crucial as she takes on this immense new role as Mission Director for USAID/Sudan.
As we've discussed, Sudan is in the throes of a devastating war that has thwarted the Sudanese people's efforts to end years of dictatorship and to establish civilian-led rule. Nearly 11 million people, a fifth of Sudan's population, have been displaced. 750,000 of them at least are on the brink of starvation. And last week, Famine was officially confirmed in North Darfur. Conditions are likely to worsen as long as the forces responsible for this horrific conflict continue to prioritize themselves and their own interests over the interests of the Sudanese people.
The United States will continue to call on the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces to lay down their arms and to allow communities to fulfill their dreams of a democratic, civilian-led government and a peaceful Sudan. As Mission Director, Margaret will need to find ways to work around the immense barriers still blocking humanitarian access, first and foremost, by continuing to support Sudanese first responders. She'll need to work with interagency colleagues toward a sustained peace, and she's already begun to build those relationships from her time as Deputy Mission Director in Egypt. She will have to build community within a Mission dispersed in various forms of exile, supporting and motivating new teams still reeling from trauma, and wracked by uncertainty and fear for their futures and of course for their country's future.
At the same time, Margaret will also need to work toward the priorities for that future to prepare communities to rebuild their country after the conflict. In the words of one Sudan expert at the Agency, “In this kind of environment, it's hard not to get bogged down in the horror of the situation. But Margaret will need to keep in mind that there is a possible future that is not this, and she will need to figure out what USAID’s role is in creating that future.”
This job demands a leader who is creative, focused, and deeply empathetic. Someone who looks out for her staff, supporting them in the big ways, but also the small ways. Someone who can build community even in the toughest of times, and who stays calm and cool in a crisis.
In every aspect, as you can tell, Margaret is an ideal fit for this role. In the words of a colleague, she demonstrates “exactly the people centered leadership that we need for Sudan.” I'm so grateful that we will have Margaret's steady hand, steady leadership, as we help Sudanese communities navigate this crisis and put them in a position to build that brighter future.
We're so grateful to you, John; you, Patricia; and your whole family for loaning us Margaret. We know that, especially newly married, the last thing you want to be is in different countries. But thank you for, again, your respective lifetimes of service. And Margaret, thank you for taking on this ever so important mission for this agency. Thank you so much.