Sarah Charles, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s humanitarian bureau, will step down in January, she wrote to staff on Monday in an email obtained by Devex.
During Charles’ tenure, the agency’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance has overseen unprecedented amounts of funding and humanitarian response operations, supercharged by emergency funding packages to address humanitarian needs in Ukraine and the global fallout from COVID-19.
The bureau administered nearly $12 billion in fiscal year 2022, a nearly 50% increase from the year before and nearly triple USAID’s humanitarian funding in 2016. USAID’s humanitarian workforce has been strained by a combination of proliferating global crises and long-standing internal challenges with staff hiring and retention.