Sunday, February 12, 2012

CURRENT JOB

I have two roles. I am a Science and Technology Policy Advisor and a Development Engineer. If you remember, I’m in a fellowship program, I’ve decided to include a speech by the boss of my boss, so you can see her mention what it is we do. If you lack the interest or patience for the video, you can skip to the 10 minute mark to see her briefly mention the 23 of us who are doing such advising work.

Here are Secretary Clinton’s remarks. I would listen to the whole thing for context, but I and a few others are mentioned around 10:00.



In my dual role as Development Engineer and Science & Technology Policy Advisor, I have day-to-day activities, and I run two large projects. I advise on any type of infrastructure and construction projects in our international development work (roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, clinics, power plants, shelters/housing) including irrigation systems and water and sanitation projects. Since I’m in Washington, I work in a supportive role for work done overseas helping to give comments and review on proposed projects or the proposals of people seeking to win competitive grants, contracts, or cooperative agreements.

Because this work is often few and far between, I also run two large projects. I have been in charge of the agency’s carbon neutrality efforts with the hope of becoming carbon neutral sometime in the future and eventually broadening that into environmental neutrality. I’ve been working on setting up pilots for this around the world for both operational carbon neutrality (our own energy bills, commuting, flights, cars and buildings we own, etc.) and programmatic carbon neutrality (zeroing the carbon footprint of our development projects, activities, and programs in countries around the world, such as an anti-corruption campaign, building a school, a vaccination program, or training program on disaster risk reduction).

Also I head the agency’s post-disaster/post-conflict initiative, smoothening the transition between our emergency response (post-conflict and post-disaster) and long-term recovery and reconstruction. In this work, I build coalitions and run a network of 54 professionals from academia, private industry, NGOs, and other government agencies.


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