Country Director, Peace Corps Zambia
I advise executives on practical AI strategy. I also lead one of Peace Corps’ largest posts in Africa. The combination is rarer than it should be.
Twenty years of operations and programming leadership across three continents, including a pandemic evacuation and disaster management during a coup attempt, plus a working fluency in the AI tools now changing how organizations run.
Where I sit
Strategy is my training: Fortune 500 health companies at PwC, multi-country TB access portfolios at CHAI, and the country programs I shape today. Since 2012 I have guided large organizations through technology shifts, eHealth to mobile to AI, and I build with today’s tools myself, daily. The technology changes. The failure modes don’t.
Twenty years running complex, high-stakes operations. Today that means a $5M portfolio, 57 staff across five provincial offices, and 75 Volunteers in remote Zambian communities. I have led teams through a coup attempt, civil unrest, and a pandemic evacuation. Risk is not theoretical to me.
I start things I believe should exist. Beyond Busy Living helps women design intentional lives beyond busyness. The Alliance for Diaspora Empowerment, which I co-founded, connects service work across the African Diaspora. In Sierra Leone, it was DREAM Girls, a direct-service workshop series I built with the Aberdeen Women’s Centre.
On the ground
Career Atlas
Start with Zambia. That is where it began, and where it leads. Select any country to open its chapter.
Zambia, the full circle Chapters TB access portfolio
What I take on
I help leaders figure out where AI genuinely saves time, where it introduces real risk, and how to adopt it without theater. My advice comes from daily practice with the tools and from running the kind of organization that has to live with the consequences.
Senior operating roles, country or regional director level and above, with international NGOs, foundations, multilaterals, and corporate social impact teams. I am at my best where the stakes are high and the context is complicated.
An operator’s eye in the room: someone who has managed budgets, security incidents, and ministry relationships, and who asks the questions that only come from having done the work.
Sessions on leading through complexity and on practical AI adoption. Expect specifics. I have found that a true story about a hard week teaches more than a framework ever has.
Experience
One of Peace Corps’ largest posts in Africa: a ~$5M annual portfolio including $2M+ under PEPFAR, the U.S. global HIV/AIDS initiative, with 57 staff across five provincial offices and ~75 Volunteers. I represent Peace Corps with Zambian government ministries, U.S. Embassy leadership, CDC, and global implementing partners.
~44 staff and ~30 Volunteers across five regions. Led emergency response during the November 2023 attempted coup d’état and the August 2022 civil unrest.
Oversight of health and HIV programming across 22 countries under PEPFAR. Deputy principal delegate in its annual country-level planning process.
~20 staff and ~120 Volunteers. Co-led crisis coordination during COVID-19, including the safe evacuation of 700+ Volunteers transiting through Addis Ababa.
Multi-country TB access portfolios exceeding $10M across East and Southern Africa and Southeast Asia, working directly with Ministries of Health and WHO.
Strategy, governance, and digital transformation for Fortune 500 payers, providers, pharma, and diagnostics. I led project execution and operational readiness on a $6M health insurance exchange implementation, directing a client team of 50+ across eleven program areas. I also built eHealth and mobile strategies for major health systems and insurers, and advised an intergovernmental organization on its reorganization.
Where it started. Led a $500K HIV counseling and testing program and trained ~500 caregivers and counselors across all nine provinces, first as a Peace Corps Volunteer.
Beyond the resume
In 2005 I moved into a rural Zambian village as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Twenty years later I returned to lead the entire program. I do not know a cleaner way to say what service means to me than that circle.
Outside the day job, I build. Beyond Busy Living grew out of watching accomplished women, myself included, mistake busyness for a life. The Alliance for Diaspora Empowerment came from a conviction that service work across the African Diaspora is stronger connected than scattered. Neither is a side hustle. They are what I do with what I have learned.
Get in touch
Shaping a strategy, weighing an AI decision, filling a senior role, or building something that needs an operator’s judgment? I would like to hear from you.