Jim Richardson is a participant at the Consensus for Development Reform and has over 20 years of experience as an independent consultant. He is the former director of the Office of Foreign Assistance in the U.S. Department of State, where he coordinated $35 billion in foreign assistance across the State Department and the USAID, ensuring policy, performance, and budget alignment. Before that, he served as coordinator at USAID’s Transformation Task Team, where he led the Agency’s historic reorganization to reshape the agency around the principle of “Ending the Need for Foreign Assistance.”