USAID Staff Backgrounds Forge Connections with Aid Recipients
FrontLines - September 2009
By Sam Dreiman and Ajay Palaparty
While many of USAID’s 8,000 employees come from diverse ethnic, racial, and language groups, a number have come from a background of poverty—an experience that has made them feel even more closely the challenges
of the people the Agency serves around the world.
Margaret Dula distributes gifts to schoolgirls in rural Jordan. A community outreach event in Al-Karak, Jordan, in November 2008 provided the Al-Adnaniya Charitable Society with office furniture and equipment. An open day for local children was also organized, which increased awareness of USAID programs in the area.
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Margaret Dula, the desk officer
for Jordan, believes her background
to be a large part of her motivation to work with USAID.
Growing up in the Smoky Mountains area in the heart of Appalachia, Dula’s childhood was unique. The Appalachia culture that surrounded her was one where “girls married young, and men made the money,” she said.
Dula was no exception. She married early and had her first child a year later at age 16.
Coming from a society where the men were the heads of the family, Dula’s brother had a college fund, but not her, she said. By the time she was 17, Dula was working full time and attending night school to complete
her high school education.
Inspired by the women’s movement of the 1970s, she attended community college in Northern Virginia at night and went on to graduate from George Mason University with a bachelor’s degree in contract law and accounting. She earned her master’s in world justice from Holy Names University.
After working for several years with defense contractors, she joined the Agency in 1991 to “do something helpful and travel,” she said. She began her career with USAID as a regional contracting officer and worked as the Agency’s procurement ombudsman before assuming her current position as a desk officer for Jordan.
Lisa Chiles, former counselor to the Agency and director of the Executive Diversity Council, said that the special experience of people from challenging socioeconomic backgrounds has enriched the agency.
“People who come from different
backgrounds bring unique perspectives to the problem,” said Chiles. “We seek to do all we can to encourage employment of people
from different backgrounds.”
Dula said her background has allowed her to forge a strong connection
with the people USAID serves. “I can relate to them and want to help them better their lives,” Dula said. “I’ve not had food before, and gone to bed hungry.
I know what it’s like.”
She brought these experiences
with her to Egypt, Guatemala, Bolivia, and Bangladesh. As part of USAID’s sustainable forest program, she helped an indigenous Indian tribe in Bolivia to get a lumber contract rather than contract out the work to an American firm.
Tom Davis, chief of outreach and marketing, manages recruitment
and outreach to diversity organizations. Davis said it is important to maintain diversity within the Agency.
“It is [not only] mandated that federal agencies mirror the national civilian workforce,” Davis said, “but it’s also important to developing countries.”
Margaret Dula distributes gifts to schoolgirls in rural Jordan. A community outreach event in Al-Karak, Jordan, in November 2008 provided the Al-Adnaniya Charitable Society with office furniture and equipment. An open day for local children was also organized, which increased awareness of USAID programs in the area.
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Ron Daniel, coordinator for Foreign Service recruitment and orientation, was raised in rural towns across Kentucky. Working three jobs, Daniel’s mother cared for him and his eight siblings and her younger sisters in a two-bedroom house. “She is one of my life-long heroes for all the sacrifices she made just to clothe us and keep us from starving.”
Daniel managed to survive the hungry nights and became the first person in his family to graduate from college, earning a bachelor’s degree from Murray State. He went on to get his master’s
in agricultural economics at Auburn University.
“My biggest dream was to go to Africa,” he said—a place where the people were as poor as he was as a child.
He joined USAID in 1981 and was soon working in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo on various agriculture projects. In between tours in Haiti as the deputy office director for economic growth and in Egypt as an environment officer and acting office director, Daniel spent over seven years working in various capacities in the Office of Human Resources.
“Having lived in poverty, it’s part of my soul. I’ve never felt more at home than in Africa,” Daniel said. “I wanted to give back and help small farmers. I wanted to help people like my mother.”
The people he assisted also related to him because he grew up in similar conditions.
“They think all Americans are rich,” said Daniel. “It was eye-opening for them to see that someone in America could start from poverty and succeed.”
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