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.

Dennis Vega is Chief of Staff of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Vega previously served as the Agency's Deputy Chief of Staff, and as the President and CEO (previously as the Chief Operating Officer) of America's Promise Alliance, an organization dedicated to creating the conditions for success for all young people.

Before joining America's Promise, Vega spent 9 years in the federal government, serving in senior positions at the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of State. Most recently, he served in the Department of State's Office of U.S. Foreign Assistance Resources as the Managing Director for Regional and Global Issues. During this time, he also served as the Chief of Staff in the Office of Budget and Resource Management and on the House Appropriations Committee in the House of Representatives.

Prior to government service, Vega worked for the 2008 Obama Presidential Campaign, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and Missouri State Public Defender. He is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis School of Law and the University of Texas at Austin.

Mark D. Simakovsky serves as Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Bureau for Europe and Eurasia (E&E) at USAID, with a portfolio supporting E&E programs on democracy, development and governance, as well as overseeing regional and bilateral programs for Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus. Mr. Simakovsky is the Bureau lead on Ukraine and Russia policy and represents E&E in the interagency, Congress and the Administration on Ukraine and Russia-related issues.

Mr. Simakovsky brings over 15 years of national security experience in the private sector and the U.S. government, including work at the State Department, Department of Defense, and Congress, focused on U.S. national security challenges in Europe and Eurasia. Most recently, Mr. Simakovsky was Senior Vice President at Beacon Global Strategies, a national security consulting firm in Washington, DC from 2015-2021. He was also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center from 2015-2021.

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.