Mabelle "Minnie" Cruz

Ms. Cruz has 19 years of project management and international development experience, including 11 years working on local governance and transparency projects and over 5years providing M&E support, monitoring, and reporting. Currently, Ms. Cruz is the Deputy Chief of Party (DCOP) for USAID’s Participación Cívica Project in Guatemala City, where she provides technical management support and administrative oversight of the $25 million project focusing on strengthening civil society organizations to play a more effective role in addressing transparency issues in Guatemala, as well as the Open Government Initiative in the country. Previously, she worked for Management Systems International (MSI) as a Senior Project Management Advisor embedded within a Paraguayan NGO implementing a $24 million USAID Democracy and Governance (D&G) Cooperative Agreement. Ms. Cruz was responsible for providing daily guidance, management, and training on USAID regulations and project management to 30 local staff members in order to build their capacity and ensure high performance and compliance with USG regulations. As a USAID Officer based in Ghor, Afghanistan, she was responsible for overseeing all USAID D&G and Economic Growth programs, project design, strategy development, and program monitoring and evaluation (M&E). Ms. Cruz also spearheaded all civil society and media efforts of the USAID Team in Ghor, which allowed her to understand and resolve many conflicts, paving the way for the USAID-funded Project Initiative to Promote Afghan Civil Society to identify a partner for a Civil Society Support Center. Ms. Cruz’s anti-corruption work involved supporting CSOs and IPs in their efforts to promote democratization with a focus on reducing abuses by the government such as bribery, extortion and fraud. Ms. Cruz supported efforts with governmental institutions, private organizations and CSOs, working on specific issues such as the media, youth, and women to promote transparency and accountability by the local government. Previous to USAID, Ms. Cruz spent eight and a half years at Tetra Tech ARD, where she was responsible for project management and implementation in South American, Afghanistan, and Sub-Saharan Africa on projects ranging from rule of law and local governance to sustainable alternative development and decentralization. Ms. Cruz has extensive experience in all aspects of managing project teams from recruitment, hiring, mentoring, and training, and has supervised small and large teams comprised of mostly national staff. Ms. Cruz has substantial experience in reporting, including but not limited to developing USAID quarterly and annual reports, monitoring and evaluation plans, assessments, success stories, as well as updating project databases and websites. In close collaboration with M&E staff, Ms. Cruz conducted field visits to help design performance monitoring and management plans and provided on-going support to field programs as needed to ensure project impact is measured, captured and effectively communicated.