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Position Title
Country Representative
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Mr. John Cardenas holds the rank of Minister Counselor in the Senior Foreign Service and will assume duties as the USAID/Libya Country Representative based in the Libya External Office in Tunis in October 2022.

He recently completed a three year assignment in Baghdad as the USAID/Iraq Mission Director. In that role, he had principal responsibility for the $1.2 billion in obligated funds in economic development, democracy and governance and stabilization programs. He received the Agency award for heroism in 2021 for maintaining mission operations and ensuring staff safety following the New Year's Eve attack on Embassy Baghdad. He led governance activities that promoted increased transparency and accountability in procurement, budget and banking regulations. With recent programming around climate change, renewable energy and private sector engagement, Mr. Cardenas increased collaboration with the Government of Iraq by signing the first-ever Development Objective Agreement with an estimated total amount of almost $550 million. Espousing a longstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion issues, Mr. Cardenas achieved the successful implementation of $450 million in stabilization programming focused on the safe return of religious and ethnic minorities in the northern region of Iraq.

From 2016 to 2019, as the Director for the Office of North African and Arabian Affairs in the Middle East Bureau in USAID/Washington, Mr. Cardenas headed a multi-country portfolio team responsible for desk officer and technical field support to USAID missions in Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia and Morocco. Coordinating USAID strategic approaches within interagency policy dialogue for these countries, Mr. Cardenas has demonstrated expertise in development and humanitarian assistance programming in non-presence and conflict environments. Mr. Cardenas served as the USAID/Afghanistan Deputy Mission Director in Kabul from 2015-2016, with responsibility for managing the Mission’s $1.3 billion Infrastructure portfolio as well as the offices of Agriculture, Economic Growth, and Acquisition and Assistance. In that role he chaired the Mission’s counter-terrorism vetting program, the water working group, and the Almaty Consensus working group. He previously served as the Resident Legal Officer in Afghanistan (2014), Peru (2009-2014) and Egypt (2005-2009).

With 20 years of USAID experience, he has received several Agency awards for bilateral negotiations involving privileges and immunities issues in Egypt and Bolivia, and was a leader in piloting procurement reform activities across USAID missions in South America. Prior to joining USAID, he was a corporate transactional lawyer at O′Melveny and Myers in Los Angeles. He holds an A.B., magna cum laude, from Princeton University; and M.A. (Political Science) and J.D. degrees from Stanford University.

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