Ms. Knudsen joins USAID from the Department of State, where she has served as the Director of Policy and Plans for the Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition. Previously, she covered counterterrorism, conflict and stabilization operations, and fragile states on the Secretary’s Policy Planning staff. From 2011 to 2014, Ms. Knudsen served as the Director for Strategic Planning on the National Security Staff, focusing on crises and Middle East transitions. She worked for the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization; was deployed to Afghanistan from 2007-2009 for civilian-military campaign planning; and was the lead planning, budget, and Congressional liaison for the Secretary of State’s Civilian Reserve Taskforce. Under the United Nations, Ms. Knudsen served from 2000-2002 as an advisor to the Ministry for Labor and Solidarity for the East Timor Transitional Administration, and earlier she worked with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and UNICEF. Her other roles include time working on African regional peacekeeping for the International Peace Academy in New York; monitoring human rights in Northern Ireland; and observing elections in Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Haiti.
Ms. Knudsen has a Masters from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School and a Bachelors in Development Studies from Brown and the University of Zimbabwe.