Samantha Power’s time as USAID administrator is up. She talks to us about what she did — and didn’t — accomplish and what the future might hold for her agency.
Also in today’s edition: We have the scoop on some incoming officials in Donald Trump’s White House, and luminaries in the food space prod leaders to think much bigger when it comes to hunger.
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Powerful reflections
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A balancing act — that’s what Samantha Power has performed for the past three and a half years as head of USAID, which receives criticism for everything from not taking enough risk to not using taxpayer funds wisely enough.
In one of her last interviews before leaving office, Power spoke with Devex for a special edition of the This Week in Global Development podcast about navigating the push-pull of her job, whether it’s trying to frame the narrative around USAID’s foreign policy objectives, or trying to institute reforms with limited resources.
“You have to have the balance in life between the patience to know that systems change … but the impatience to never be like, ‘Oh but it takes time,’” she said. “I try to strike that balance.”
Power took the reins of America’s preeminent aid agency somewhat on the impatient side, promptly laying out an ambitious plan for reform that included increasing USAID’s workforce, stripping bureaucratic red tape, and bringing more local partners into the fold, my colleague Elissa Miolene writes.
She also spoke about balancing the desire to take risks with the desire to be “faithful stewards of taxpayer money.”
But some Republican lawmakers don’t think USAID has been a very good steward. They claim money is flowing to progressive causes such as LGBTQ+ rights. Power pushed back.
“There might be individual members of Congress who pluck out a single program and try to reduce all that USAID is doing in the world to some particular beneficiary or constituency in a manner that makes it look — as they put it to me — ideological. They’re not going to find a lot of that at USAID,” she said.
Nevertheless, the agency is likely to be put under the microscope in a Republican-controlled government led by a president notoriously skeptical of foreign aid. There is some hope, however, that Donald Trump may find geostrategic value in offering the world an alternative to China’s aid model.
While Power says U.S. soft power can advance national interests, whether it’s preventing wars or gaining new economic partners, she warned about boiling assistance down to a self-serving transaction.
“Development and humanitarian work that gets entirely instrumentalized really does risk becoming so transactional and just bounded, in a way, by shorter-term considerations,” she said. “And if you think about the kind of lasting impacts that USAID and development generally have achieved, it’s always a long game.”
Read: How Samantha Power performed a delicate balancing act as USAID chief
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Picking teams
While the Trump administration hasn’t yet named who the next USAID administrator will be, it has been busy selecting people to carry out its second-term agenda, including at the United Nations.
My colleague Colum Lynch reports that the administration is planning to appoint Maggie Dougherty, an adviser on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as senior director for multilateral affairs in the National Security Council, giving her a critical role in shaping U.S. policy on the U.N. and other international organizations, according to three well-placed development sources.
Dougherty previously served as a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida who has been picked by Trump to lead the State Department. She previously managed then-U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley’s relations with Congress, along with European matters, human rights, humanitarian relief, and refugee issues. Dougherty is widely regarded as a competent and knowledgeable foreign policy hand in Congress. Dougherty did not reply to a request for comment left on her cell phone.
Trump’s nomination to lead the U.S. delegation at the U.N., Rep. Elise Stefanik, has picked a senior adviser, Jim Robertson, to help manage her work in New York. The two had lunch with outgoing U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield last month. The meeting, according to two senior U.N.-based diplomats, was broadly cordial and constructive.
David Vennett, a Republican who served as a senior adviser to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres during the first Trump administration, is being considered for an ambassadorial post at the U.S. Mission to the U.N., according to two well-placed sources. Vennett acted as a key conduit between the U.N. chief and the Trump administration. Vennett did not respond to a request for comment.
ICYMI: The year of UNcertainty
‘Moonshot’ mindmeld
When some of the world’s most prized minds come together to make an urgent plea, you’d hope people would listen.
That’s certainly the hope among the 150 Nobel Prize and World Food Prize laureates who published an open letter calling for world leaders to invest in “moonshot” technologies to tackle the global hunger crisis, which is only getting worse in the face of climate change.
The letter will be discussed at a meeting today on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on how agricultural research and development moonshots can bolster U.S. national security, Devex Senior Editor Tania Karas writes.
“We are not on track to meet future food needs. Not even close,” the letter states, noting that the “ever increasing use of diminishing non-replenishable resources to feed humanity” will not last forever.
“From improvements in crop genetics facilitated by artificial intelligence to the development of local-scale nitrogen fertilizer production, we must address the global food demand on multiple “moonshot” fronts,” signatory Cynthia Rosenzweig, senior research scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the 2022 World Food Prize winner, told Devex.
As Mashal Husain, the incoming president of the World Food Prize Foundation, which helped coordinate the letter, put it: “Having the world’s greatest minds unite behind this urgent wake-up call should inspire hope and action.”
Read: 150 Nobel and World Food Prize winners call for food security 'moonshot'
Hungry to make a difference
Global food systems seem to have reached a contradictory crossroads. One recent analysis warns that if current trends persist, food insecurity could leave 640 million people, including 121 million children, underweight by 2050. On the flip side, obesity rates are projected to soar by 70%, and food production will continue to drive a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Innovative thinkers will be needed to address a multilayered problem that demands bold action.
So we spoke with Qwamel Hanks, a nutrition adviser who is an institutional contractor at USAID’s Bureau for Resilience, Environment and Food Security, about what it takes to break into a field that’s going to be essential for feeding the planet.
“Nutrition is a very interdisciplinary field. Working in global nutrition requires varying degrees of knowledge on an array of topics, such as agriculture, health, gender, climate change, and behavioral science,” Hanks told Devex contributor Katrina Lane.
“In addition to utilizing all sides of your brain, nutrition and its relevant disciplines are constantly evolving. This means that constant study is required to keep up with the latest evidence,” she added. “However, this is one of my favorite aspects of this sector. You can never get bored!”
Read: Career advice from a nutrition adviser at USAID
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In other news
The European Union has pledged €140 million in humanitarian aid for Ukraine and an additional €8 million for Moldova, which was announced during EU Commissioner for Preparedness, Crisis Management and Equality Hadja Lahbib’s visit to Ukraine. [Reuters]
The World Bank, WHO, and UNICEF signed an $82 million agreement to improve health services for over 8 million vulnerable people in Sudan and strengthen the country’s health care system. [WHO]
Oxfam chief Halima Begum called for decolonizing the aid system by shifting power and resources from wealthy, colonial-legacy nations to the global south, where aid is most needed. [The Guardian]
Update, Jan. 14, 2025: This article has been updated to clarify that Rep. Elise Stefanik has picked Jim Robertson as senior adviser.
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About the author
Anna Gawel
Anna Gawel is the Managing Editor of Devex. She previously worked as the managing editor of The Washington Diplomat, the flagship publication of D.C.’s diplomatic community. She’s had hundreds of articles published on world affairs, U.S. foreign policy, politics, security, trade, travel and the arts on topics ranging from the impact of State Department budget cuts to Caribbean efforts to fight climate change. She was also a broadcast producer and digital editor at WTOP News and host of the Global 360 podcast. She holds a journalism degree from the University of Maryland in College Park.
