Washington, DC
ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: Hello, everyone. Thank you, for turning on your cameras, we always ask you to turn on your cameras and no one ever listens to us. So we really feel like you’re here in the room for those of you who have joined remotely; and for those of you here with us in person, it’s just wonderful to be part of this event. I’m especially grateful because we had to move the timing of this event to accommodate a request from President Biden for me to travel to Armenia and Azerbaijan in light of the humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh, and so everyone had to scramble and adjust their calendars.
So Ambassador, thanks to you for making the time twice for this, and thank you to Luis [Riviera], it means a lot to all of us. There were some subtle insinuations about USAID-State ties that I look forward to getting a better sense of best practices other than saying, “Clone Luis,” which I think is the conclusion we are to draw from your remarks. But congratulations to you Ambassador, because your advocacy on behalf of Kazakhstan and Central Asia have really contributed to this deepening of investment, of enthusiasm, of attention to these important countries and this important region. So, I hadn’t realized exactly the span of your dedication to that part of the world until I read up a little further on your bio, but when you think about, again, President Biden sitting with the leaders of all the countries of this region and engaging with them at the General Assembly in the way that he did, I’m looking forward to visiting the region myself as USAID Administrator, again something that is hardly common practice, I think in domain after domain we are seeing just how significant this deepening of these partnerships has become. And I, personally, I feel very privileged to be in this job at a time when that is happening, and getting to explore what is possible. I really do think, and well, the President certainly believes, that the sky’s the limit, on how we can work together across a range of domains.
Thank you to the Deputy Chief of Mission of Kazakhstan, Rauan Tleulin. I’m looking forward to you and your government’s officials getting to know Luis even better than you do already in this capacity.
Luis’ family, so much to say, but of course thank the person without which this ceremony definitely would not be possible, Carmen [Morales], Luis’ mother, who has traveled to us from Mexico to be part of this, and is so proud of her son, and so much a factor to why Luis has had the success that he’s had over the years. Your love, that pride, all of the support, making him do his homework, staying on top of him in those years, there’s no question in many respects that we would not be here without you, Carmen, and so thank you, thanks again for accommodating the change in the schedule. Thanks also to Luis’ sister Claudia and brother Henry, who are here with us as well, we are absolutely thrilled. And thank you to Luis’ spouse, Christopher Baumgarten. I know that Luis’ work has taken you all around the world. There are advantages to that, there are disadvantages to that, but I gather that you continually keep USAID team members very well-fed with your culinary skills, the gardens that I guess you create, Michelle Obama-style in every country. But I also just want to thank you for your service to our country and for the work that you are doing with the State Department, and the support that you’re offering our foreign policy in the work you do every day. It’s telework, so it can be isolating. It's not easy, but it’s a great sacrifice as well for our country.
Luis has always loved adventure. He moved from his birthplace of Aguascalientes, Mexico to Chicago, Illinois when he was eight years old. He and his three siblings spent school years in the hustle and bustle of the Windy City, and warm summers surrounded by family down in Mexico.
In school, Luis was always the first to try a new club, the first to step into a leadership position, the first to head out into the unknown. He spent a semester in high school studying abroad in Brazil, and a few years after graduating, as you heard, he joined the Peace Corps.
He was all set to head to Morocco when the Peace Corps reached out with a question. The Soviet Union had just collapsed. In the thaw of the Cold War, the Peace Corps was going to send its first group of volunteers into former Soviet nations – these would be people who would be on the front lines of the effort to build a new, more constructive relationship, and to help address the desperate poverty and environmental degradation that so many Soviet nations were facing in those times. Would Luis, by any chance, be willing to take on this challenge?
Being Luis, he of course said yes, and he headed out to serve as an English teacher in the Kyrgyz Republic, building connections with a new generation of Kyrgyz students.
After volunteering with the Peace Corps, Luis worked for eight years with the organization. It was during this time that he met Christopher in a coffee shop, and the rest is history.
From the Peace Corps, I think they never would have guessed, that they’d be all these years later, back in a very different region that had evolved and progressed so much. Christopher was even describing food shortages at that time in those early former Soviet Republics, and now of course Kazakhstan progressing and developing very, very rapidly. But from the Peace Corps Luis made the jump to USAID and began doing essential work in Acquisitions and Assistance.
When most people set out to change the world through development work, or they think about it as young people, they probably don’t think, “ah, Acquisitions and Assistance.” But, it is appropriate that the acronym is A&A – the first letter of the alphabet. Because doing development right has to start with doing A&A right. And I’m learning that myself, in this job.
One of the most important truths in development is that change is most transformational, and most sustained, when it’s led by local organizations. But when our A&A process builds barriers or sets out too many hoops to jump through in order to partner with USAID, that can often make it impossible for local communities, faith-based organizations, local actors to navigate the Byzantine bureaucracy. So in those circumstances localization is an aspiration, but very hard to make real through actually providing assistance to local partners.
We also know, of course, that our assistance is at its most effective when it is nimble and responsive to what can be sudden changes of priorities or needs on the ground. But if our A&A process takes so long that we’re stuck funding two years’ ago’s priorities, it’s going to be hard for us to meet the moment.
And Luis understood these challenges intimately – and got to work fixing them.
As a contracting officer in the Central American Regional Mission, he worked closely with local organizations to demystify the contracting process. He met with the leadership of local organizations, learning about their work, what they saw as the barriers to partnering with USAID, and helped them understand what to expect and at what time. This approach successfully helped new organizations receive awards. And we’ve since tried to replicate this, since we can’t clone Luis necessarily to have these conversations with every organization, but with the workwithusaid.org website, which has been very helpful in enlisting new partners to the Agency.
And in Jordan, Luis led one of the largest USAID portfolios through one of the most pressing pivots the Agency has seen. In the early 2010s, our Jordan mission was investing roughly a billion dollars a year in health work, economic growth, and infrastructure priorities like water systems. But, at the same time we were doing that of course, the conflict in Syria began. Hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring across the border into Jordan, and our Jordan mission needed to pivot, and pivot fast. And in the world of government contracts, “fast” can be a relative term.
So Luis tapped his network, his experience, and worked with Jordan to achieve two goals. First, to help urgently organize, and authorize, massive humanitarian funds from what is now the Bureau of Humanitarian Affairs, to get water, shelter, et cetera to Syrian refugees. And second, more part of his day job, actually helping the existing development funding in Jordan pivot to accommodate the country’s new needs, from adapting public services like schooling and housing support, to accommodating so many new people. Alder Bartlett, who worked with Luis in Jordan at that time, says: “...it was a difficult time. Everyone was overworked and overwhelmed. But Luis was even-keeled. Always smiling. Even then, he was a joy to run into in the Mission.”
And amidst it all, Luis found time to advance a cause that is not only one of our most important Agency priorities, but also an issue clearly close to his heart, and that is empowering our own FSN colleagues to be able to develop and nurture their skills.
In Jordan, Luis created what became known as “ladder positions,” where FSNs could start with a local employment grade and move up to higher positions usually held by foreign service officers. This initiative has now been scaled and replicated across USAID, and was very very informative to us as we worked with so many of you as we developed the Foreign Service National Empowerment Plan.
Luis worked with FSNs here in Washington to create an Advisory Council for A&A professionals. And the new Council empowered FSN voices, connecting over 350 FSNs from around the world and giving them direct access to the leadership of A&A for the first time.
Another time during Luis’s years of service in Washington, a group of FSNs in one of our missions experienced a painful incident of bullying. Luis hopped on the very next flight, personally facilitating and directing a workshop to get to the root of the problem. As one FSN from the mission recalled, “Luis came down here when managing up was not enough. He resolved issues, without leaving people hurt. I feel empowered now.”
Luis, multiple USAID colleagues have testified that you – your empathy, your understanding, and your kindness – are in fact the reason they have stayed at this Agency when times got tough. That is an incredible tribute to you. There is no doubt that you’ve left an indelible mark on so many of the people you’ve encountered in your work over the years. And mom, beaming, you feel very proud because I suspect those values came from somewhere.
So we feel really confident saying that there is no one better to take the helm at the Central Asia Regional Mission, and obviously you have the experience of having been Deputy Mission Director there, the Ambassador already is very impressed, and now this promotion of you and your vision, I think again that full country team approach to such an important country mission is only going to get stronger.
USAID’s Central Asia Regional Mission, based in Almaty, Kazakhstan, manages programs across the five Central Asian countries – Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and the Kyrgyz Republic, where Luis of course began his career all those years ago. And he returns at a moment, from the U.S. standpoint, of really arguably unprecedented promise in terms of the relationship between our countries.
Kazakhstan, for instance, where the Central Asia Regional Mission is based, has long been a regional leader. Today, President {Kassym-Jomart] Tokayev’s government has instituted direct elections for local and regional governments, and some independent parties have been allowed to register for elections, for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union.
This moment of promise also is occurring elsewhere, people are coming together in a variety of places to push for important change. We are working with the people and governments of all five countries, where we can, to promote a more free and independent media, and a more robust civil society that can advocate on behalf of social services and environmental protection, that can raise their voice when corruption is getting in the way of effectuating the kind of change that certain government leaders would like to see deliver for citizens. We are helping build trade linkages to try to accelerate economic growth. We are supporting citizens to reverse environmental damage that still is a legacy effect of policies during the Soviet Union. And I will say at President Biden’s meeting with Central Asian leaders, I heard a lot about water. There were a lot of concerns about water shortages, and how to tap the potential of the region to also make the transition to more renewable sources of energy.
In this time of transition and hope, Luis’s profound sense of what’s right, his unmatched ability to dig into a problem and find creative solutions, and his commitment to building strong and empowered teams will position him to help turn this moment of opportunity into sustained and even deeper progress. So I can’t wait to see what you and Christopher “cook up”, as it were, and Luis, what you are able to achieve for USAID, for our country, and for the people of Central Asia when you get back to your home and take on this incredible leadership position. Thanks for taking this on.