Daphne McCurdy serves as Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Bureau for Legislative Affairs and Public Affairs at USAID. She was previously a Senior Advisor at the State Department's Office of China Coordination.
Prior to joining the Biden-Harris Administration, Daphne served as Foreign Policy Advisor to Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR),overseeing the Senator's work on the Foreign Relations Committee and the Appropriation committee's State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs subcommittee.
She previously served as USAID/OTI Syria Deputy Country Representative based at the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul and as a countering violent extremism specialist in the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. She has also worked for the United Nations, Columbia World Projects, the Project on Middle East Democracy, and the National Endowment for Democracy’s core institutes both in DC and across the Middle East and Africa.
Daphne is a Council on Foreign Relations term member, Truman National Security Project fellow, and former Fulbright scholar in Turkey. Her analysis has appeared in Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, and War on the Rocks and her longer research published by the Center for New American Security, Center for Strategic International Studies, and the Century Foundation. Daphne holds a B.A. from Tufts University and an MPA from Princeton University.