Kate Crawford joined the USAID/South Sudan team as Mission Director in September 2022. A career Foreign Service Officer, Ms. Crawford has more than 30 years of experience in humanitarian and development programs and global U.S. government interagency initiatives. She has served in USAID missions in Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Central Asia.
Ms. Crawford’s international work began as a Peace Corps volunteer in what was then called the Republic of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Ms. Crawford returned to Zaire to work on UNICEF’s Emergency Program, responding to civil unrest and the needs of internally displaced populations. In 1994, she joined USAID’s Rwanda Genocide Disaster Assistance Response Team, responsible for emergency relief in eastern Zaire and Rwanda. Returning to Rwanda in 1995 in her first Foreign Service assignment, Ms. Crawford helped rebuild USAID’s post-genocide portfolio. Her other overseas assignments have included serving as the General Development, Health, or President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Office Director in Cambodia, Tanzania, and Pakistan.
From 2013 to 2016, Ms. Crawford was the Director of USAID’s Office of American Schools and Hospitals Abroad, which provides grant assistance to innovative and state-of-the-art schools, libraries, and medical centers in more than 80 countries.
In 2016, Ms. Crawford served as USAID’s Country Director for Tajikistan, where she led efforts in economic growth, democracy, education, health, and food security. Most recently, Ms. Crawford was the Director of USAID’s Office of Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition in the Bureau for Global Health, where she focused on expanding USAID’s global immunization programming and technical capacity.
Ms. Crawford has a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Montana in history and economics and a Master of Public Health from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She speaks French.