Washington, DC
ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: Chargé [d'affaires Kumar Kharel], thank you so much for speaking with such feeling. That said – my trip to Nepal, that is what I encountered in so many Nepalese, is just some personal connection to what USAID has done over the years. And it means so much to us to hear that play back. And I couldn't agree more about the opportunities in the tech sector in particular. We were just talking about that, in fact, about the spirit of innovation, the young people, the dynamism, and riding that wave is going to be really really important for the future of the country.
Ambassador [Dean] Thompson, it's great to see you, thank you for being here, thank you for always being such a stalwart partner to USAID. So much of the impact, I think of the work of these development programs, you know, comes from the fact that we are working hand in glove with you and because you have a vision for how best to support Nepalese economic development. So, we're so grateful to you.
You know, normally, and I will do a little bit of this, I spend a lot of time thanking family for the service, for the hardship, but this is the best job, you’re so lucky. So, there are a number of jobs like that here, but there is still a lot of sacrifice and hardship. Katie, your young son Max has to give up his nascent baseball career and trade the baseball bat in for a cricket paddle. But this really is such a wonderful opportunity, and especially at this moment, where Nepal really is at an inflection point on its development trajectory, and where there are reformist impulses that have the chance to be strengthened. I think this is a very, very exciting opportunity.
So, first to thank Katie's family, and we have a number of members that are here with us today, Katie's Mom, Barbara. We have her younger sister Bridget, brother-in-law Sean and their son Cooper, older brother Brian and niece Claire, mother-in-law Georgia and father-in-law Gilbert, and two aunts Gretchen and Susan. I would be remiss, of course, not acknowledging Katie's dad who's no longer with us, but he's so here in spirit today. He was, I gather, enormously proud of Katie – who wouldn’t be – and would just be so thrilled I'm sure to see how much you’ve accomplished and to imagine you embarking on this great family adventure.
I mentioned Max already, Katie and Eric's 10 year old son, and her two older sons Harper and Noah, who could not be here today. A special thanks to Eric who was a public servant as well, an incredible duo who give so much for this country. Eric is the Division Chief for Europe and Eurasia in the Consular Affairs office at the State Department. He's one of the people you can call when you get in trouble overseas and need help, and he's one that actually responds, and he takes that very seriously. But, thank you Eric, and again thanks to you, the whole family, for inculcating this spirit of service in Katie and Eric and, as I heard earlier, Max too.
Katie was born in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. From an early age she was confident, I gather, about two things. First, that she wanted to learn as much as she could about absolutely everything. As you heard, she taught herself to read at age three, and her mother often found her nestled under the covers with a flashlight and a book, long past bedtime. Second, she was determined to see the world. One day she called her mom from school with a request: would she be able to send a check to the school before it closed so that she could go to Russia with the Russian club?
But here's the thing. Katie was not in the Russian Club. She did not speak Russian. When her mother pointed out these two footnotes, inconveniences to the plan, Katie said: “I’ll just learn on the plane.” So, even then, if a crash course in Cyrillic was what it was going to take to get her closer to her dreams, then so be it.
Her drive to see the world and to do what she could to improve the messiness of this world only grew as she studied political science at Notre Dame. Immediately after her graduation, almost 25 years ago to the day, Katie moved to Madagascar as a Peace Corps volunteer. She went on to earn her Master's in international studies from Johns Hopkins, and then began her career at USAID, as so many do, as a Presidential Management Fellow in the office of Southern African Affairs.
At USAID, Katie has shown a great talent for shaping solutions to tough problems, and then bringing people together to execute those solutions out into the world.
For example, when Katie took on the role of Deputy Director of USAID Office of Education back in 2011, the sector was facing some fairly significant challenges. Leaders were focused on access to education for good reason: a growing number of students were unable to go to school due to conflict and other disasters. Extremists, of course, were using violence to keep girls in particular out of classrooms. But, while leaders in the sector focused on increasing access, not enough attention was being paid to outcomes: whether kids were actually learning essential skills while they were in school. The data was alarming. In Mali, 94 percent of children enrolled in grade two could not read even one word in a simple sentence at the end of the school year.
So, Katie and her team got to work shaping a new strategy to address these challenges. She built coalitions across the U.S. government and beyond to increase access to education, working with the First Lady Michelle Obama to shape the whole-of-government Let Girls Learn initiative, which was aimed at keeping adolescent girls in particular in school, and spearheading a program that thrives to this day, The Education Cannot Wait partnership with the UN, to surge resources to countries where large numbers of children were out of school due to crisis or conflict.
So, access mattered, getting kids in school, of course, continued to matter. At the same time, though, she increased attention to those learning outcomes. She dove deep into the scientific literature on reading skills. She engaged with teams around the world to roll out new evidence-based programming across the agency, and ultimately helped realign USAID’s education programs across more than 40 countries with a budget of nearly a billion dollars. Katie’s efforts were enormously successful, famously successful. Since financial year 2016, 26 countries with education programming supported by USAID have measurably increased the percentage of children who are proficient in reading and math. And today, other donors who contribute to education have evolved their own strategies, with almost all now focusing on education outcomes, in addition to education access, as they evaluate their progress.
Katie's manager at the time, Eric Postel, who flew in from Vermont to be in the audience, says: “Even then I could see that she had the skills to be a great Mission Director. She is a superstar.”
Katie went on to become Deputy Mission Director in Nigeria where she found herself facing another significant challenge. USAID and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria were both doing important work to fight HIV, but the efforts were uncoordinated. Our two organizations duplicated work, sometimes providing services and medicines in the same areas. Katie worked with the Global Fund, the Government of Nigeria, and USAID to craft a unified strategy, largely using the Global Fund’s resources to purchase medicines and USAID resources to support health services that would actually get those medicines to the people who needed them most. Under Katie's tenure, Nigeria's coverage of HIV treatment rose from less than 50 percent to well over 80, almost at the 90 percent level required for epidemic control.
And Katie isn't just skilled at driving important changes herself. She is an expert at empowering teams, teams to drive the changes that they envision – helping to create the environments and track down the resources that they need to do their best work.
When Katie was the Director of the Health and Education Office in Egypt, she worked with a particular FSN, who some of you know, named Hala El Serafy. USAID’s education budget in Egypt at the time was the second largest of any mission in the world. Following President Obama's 2009 visit to the country, the United States committed to supporting science and technology in Egypt. Hala was the first person to push for specialized STEM schools and dreamed up a project to make them a reality. Katie believed in Hala’s work and her vision. She also believed in Hala’s ability to get this done. Especially at that time, Foreign Service Officers were typically the ones that took meetings with government and other stakeholders to negotiate these kinds of projects. But Katie put Hala in the driver's seat, helping her to lead the process from beginning to end – from creating the strategy, to negotiating the curriculum. Katie made sure that Hala and her team had the support and the buy in that they needed.
And, as we know when we do this, it works! Katie’s trust and empowerment of Hala proved well-placed. The initiative resulted in 11 new STEM-focused high schools that serve thousands of students. Other countries have taken note – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Nigeria, and even the United States have taken best practices from Egypt's experiences setting up these specialized STEM high schools, and brought those lessons back to their school systems. With Katie’s support, Hala’s vision will continue to change the lives of students for decades to come.
Katie also supported her teams in the everyday ways that matter most. Katie worked with the community to throw Ngaitila [Phiri], an FSN from Zambia, a surprise party during a particularly difficult time in her life. As she put it, Katie “...became part of my family.” Ambassador [Kathleen] Fitzgibbon, who is currently the U.S. Ambassador to Niger but was stationed at the Embassy of Nigeria when Katie was there, remembers that when construction concluded on the new office space for the USAID Nigeria team, Katie organized a traditional Nigerian dedication ceremony to make the moment special.
Now, Katie will take the leadership skills she has built over an entire career in many different incarnations to Nepal. Nepal is a really important long-term partner for the United States and one that is critical to regional stability. Our partnership helps support the Nepali people as they continue to build a more equitable, prosperous and democratic country, and as they increasingly take on a leadership role in the region.
In the past decade, Nepal has improved by 12 points on the Freedom House Freedom in the World Ranking, an impressive feat that demonstrates democracy’s momentum in the country, and particularly young people's ownership over those trends. The country conducted peaceful and transparent elections in 2022. And today, Nepal is making important strides to empower those young people – to advance the inclusion of women and marginalized communities, including same sex couples who as of last year can now marry, and to demonstrate that democracy can deliver for its citizens. To seize the moment, we know that we need to invest in the changemakers, those who are driving change on the ground in Nepal.
So, we are prioritizing local voices USAID, Nepal has quickly become a standout leader in these efforts. And I would add the shout out to Sepideh [Keyvanshad], and the work that she and the team have done. I was talking with Katie about how in granting awards or making decisions about funding requests, the default assumption is that U.S. resources are going to go either to a local organization, or through G2G [government to government]. That's not happening, of course, with all the awards and acquisitions, but when we are not doing that, which is often circumstances in which we are not doing that, the default is that you do it and you provide an explanation for why you're not. So, it completely changes the mindset, where the assumption is you're going to go local, find the Nepalese who do the work, do the jobs, and in circumstances where that's not possible, fall back to some of our amazing international partners who have been working there for some time.
So this default where staff are required to explore local partnerships when they begin any new program, I think, can be a model for what we do elsewhere in the world. With this approach, the Nepal mission has gone from one active local award in 2022 to nine current active local awards, with an additional 19 in the process of being rolled out. It went from less than one percent of funding going to local partners in FY 2021 to more than 22 percent this year. And while we have our agency targets that all of you are familiar with, the Nepal Mission has set for itself a 40 percent target for assistance to go between local organizations and G2G. These local Nepalese changemakers will help drive transformative, enduring change for the Nepali people, as they work alongside USAID to bolster Nepal's democracy to grow the economy to improve public health, and to get all of Nepal's kids the education that they deserve.
Katie is an avid reader, as we know, who learns about a place through its literature. Well, one Nepali author, Bhuwan Thapaliya, once wrote, quote: “Great things happen to those who have tremendous belief in their little dreams.” End quote. From that little girl who read under the covers to learn about the world, to the person here today who has dedicated an extraordinary career to improving that world, we could not be happier to watch you take on your next role with USAID. Nepal, and Nepalese staff and our American staff and all who are there at the Mission, are really fortunate to have you coming on as our next Mission Director. Thank you so much, Katie.
Thank you, Eric, thank you Max, thank you, the whole family for the support they've given us.
Congratulations.