After rejoining USAID in January 2021, Jeremy Konyndyk began leading our Agency's COVID-19 Program and Operations Strategy Task Force when it was stood up in March of that year. Over the past year and a half, he brilliantly and nimbly led the Task Force through a time of intense grief and loss, and was an instrumental force in U.S. efforts to vaccinate the world.
Jeremy will soon depart USAID to join Refugees International as its president, where he will lead the organization in advocating for lifesaving assistance for and the protection of displaced people.
Jeremy has a long and distinguished history of successful leadership on behalf of those in need. Under Jeremy’s leadership, the COVID-19 Task Force managed more than $5 billion in American Rescue Plan funds across more than 120 countries to protect health workers and communities, improve public health surveillance systems, and facilitate quicker treatment of infected individuals. Since the U.S began donating vaccines at the start of 2021, the Task Force has worked with other U.S. agencies to donate more than 620 million COVID-19 vaccines to more than 100 countries – the most donated by any country in the world.
Jeremy’s decades of experience in public health and development have been crucial to the Task Force’s success. In 2013, Jeremy began his first stint with USAID, serving as the Director of USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, where he oversaw the Agency’s humanitarian responses for more than three years. His time coincided with a number of crises – among them, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the devastating earthquake in Nepal, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, and the ongoing war in Syria. In the face of the recent monkeypox outbreak, we were fortunate to be able again to call on Jeremy to lead the U.S. government’s global response. Throughout his years of service, Jeremy has built exceptional teams and operations here at USAID that will have a lasting impact in countless communities around the world and that have also dramatically strengthened USAID’s response capabilities.