Richard R. Verma serves as the Deputy Secretary of State for Management & Resources. In this role, he acts as the Chief Operating Officer of the Department, and leads the Department’s efforts on modernization, foreign assistance, and a wide range of workforce and strategic issues.

Deputy Secretary Verma previously served as the U.S. Ambassador to India, where he led one of the largest U.S. diplomatic missions and championed historic progress in bilateral ties. He is also a former Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs and the former National Security Advisor to the Senate Majority Leader.

Deputy Secretary Verma has also had a distinguished career in the private sector, most recently serving as the Chief Legal Officer and Head of Global Public Policy for Mastercard. He is a former partner at the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson, and the Vice Chairman of The Asia Group, a global consulting firm. He also served on the T. Rowe Price corporate board of directors.

Deputy Secretary Verma is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, and the recipient of numerous military awards and civilian decorations, including the Meritorious Service Medal and the State Department’s Distinguished Service Award. He is also the recipient of the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship, and the Chief Justice Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award.

Deputy Secretary Verma was a member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, the Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism

Commission, and the Secretary of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He has served on a number of non-profit boards, including the Ford Foundation, Lehigh University, and the National Endowment for Democracy.

Deputy Secretary Verma was a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and he holds multiple academic degrees, including his doctorate (Ph.D.) from Georgetown University and his law degree (J.D.) from American University.

Dean Karlan is the Frederic Esser Nemmers Distinguished Professor of Economics and Finance at Northwestern University, co-Director with Christopher Udry of the Global Poverty Research Lab at Northwestern University, and the Founder and former President of Innovations for Poverty Action, a non-profit organization dedicated to discovering and promoting solutions to global poverty problems. Karlan also previously served on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the M.I.T. Jameel Poverty Action Lab. In 2015, he also co-founded ImpactMatters, a nonprofit dedicated to estimating and rating impact of nonprofit organizations in order to help donors choose good charities and to promote more transparency in the nonprofit sector.

His research focuses on microeconomic issues of poverty, typically employing experimental methodologies and behavioral economics insights to examine what works, what does not, and why to address social problems. His work spans many geographies and topics, including sustainable income generation for those in abject poverty, credit and savings markets for low income households, agriculture for smallholder farmers, small and medium entrepreneurship and smoking cessation, and charitable giving. He has worked in over twenty countries around the world, including both low-income countries and the United States.

As a social entrepreneur, he co-founded stickK.com, a website that uses lessons from behavioral economics to help people reach personal goals, such as weight loss and smoking cessation, through commitment contracts.

In 2011, Karlan co-authored More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics is Helping to Solve Global Poverty; in 2016 he co-authored Failing in the Field; in 2018 he co-authored The Goldilocks Challenge: Right-Fit Evidence for the Social Sector; and in 2020 he co-authored the third edition of a economics principles textbook, Economics.

Karlan received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was awarded distinguished alumni awards from the University of Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business and the Duke University Talent Identification Program.

Previously, Karlan was the Samuel C Park, Jr Professor of Economics at Yale University, and Assistant Professor of Economics at Princeton University. Karlan received a Ph.D. in Economics from M.I.T., an M.B.A. and an M.P.P. from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. in International Affairs from the University of Virginia.

Erin Elizabeth McKee serves as the Assistant Administrator in the Bureau for Europe and Eurasia (E&E) at USAID.

Prior to joining the Bureau for Europe and Eurasia, Assistant Administrator McKee served as the United States Ambassador to the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, to the Solomon Islands, and to the Republic of Vanuatu from 2019 to 2022. Prior to her ambassadorial appointment, she served as the Deputy Chief of Mission at U.S. Embassy Jakarta, and Mission Director for USAID/Indonesia and USAID/ASEAN, also in Jakarta.

Assistant Administrator McKee is a member of the Senior Foreign Service, with the rank of Career Minister, and brings a wealth of foreign policy and development experience to her position. Prior to her tour in Indonesia, Assistant Administrator McKee served as the Senior Deputy Assistant to the Administrator for the Human Capital and Talent Management Office (HCTM). She also served as the Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Bureau of Policy, Planning and Learning (PPL).  Preceding her assignments in Washington, D.C., Assistant Administrator McKee was the USAID Regional Mission Director for Central Asia. There she was responsible for direct management of USAID’s programs in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Before her assignment in Central Asia, Assistant Administrator McKee was the supervisory contracting officer at USAID’s missions in Iraq, South America (covering Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Brazil), and West Bank-Gaza. From 1995 to 1999 she served as a private enterprise officer, then as the chief of the economic growth office in USAID/Russia. Assistant Administrator McKee was recruited as a Foreign Service Officer in 1995 from the private sector.

Alain has served as the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB’s) Deputy Representative in North America since 2022. He previously served as Principal Economist in ADB’s Central and West Asia Department, where he led the development of ADB's Country Partnership Strategies for Afghanistan and Kazakhstan.

Alain joined ADB in 2004. He worked as economist and social sector specialist in ADB’s South Asia Department. After his transfer to the Strategy and Policy Department, he led the team in charge of the replenishment negotiations for the Asian Development Fund, ADB’s largest grant fund. From 2016–2019, he was seconded as Advisor to the Country Credit Department of the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.

Prior to joining ADB, Alain was contractual economist at the International Monetary Fund and postdoctoral visiting scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University. Alain holds a PhD in Applied Economics from the University of Antwerp, Belgium.

Jonathan Richart is the Deputy Vice President of the Infrastructure, Environment and Private Sector (IEPS) division within MCC’s Department of Compact Operations. Mr. Richart has served in various positions within MCC over the past 16 years and currently oversees MCC’s climate and blended finance work, and five of MCC’s technical practice units: Energy; Water & Sanitation; Transportation and Vertical Structures; Finance, Investment and Trade; and Environmental & Social Performance. Mr. Richart is responsible for the technical development and oversight of MCC’s infrastructure investments, private sector development programs, and the environmental and social performance of all MCC-funded projects.

Mr. Richart came to MCC from the International Finance Corporation where he supported private sector investments and helped to develop and implement IFC’s environmental and social policy framework and Performance Standards on Environmental and Social Sustainability. Prior to his work at IFC, he managed USAID and World Bank-funded projects at Chemonics International and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali.

Mr. Richart graduated with Distinction from the London School of Economics with a master’s degree in environmental policy, planning and regulation with a focus on economic development and the environment. He holds a Bachelor of Science in civil and environmental engineering and a Bachelor of Arts in political science and international relations from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and speaks fluent French.