Carla Koppell

Carla Koppell currently serves as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Senior Coordinator for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment and a Senior Advisor to the USAID Administrator. In that role, she is spearheading enhancement of US development assistance efforts to serve and empower women around the world and to ensure that programs are designed and implemented in a gender sensitive manner. Previously, Koppell served as director of The Institute for Inclusive Security and the Washington, DC office of Hunt Alternatives Fund where she worked to ensure that peace processes around the world involve women and civil society. While there, she worked extensively with leaders from volatile conflict zones including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan. Earlier in her career, Koppell was senior adviser and, prior to that, interim director of the Conflict Prevention Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, where she authored “Preventing the Next Wave of Conflict: Understanding Non-Traditional Threats to Global Stability.” Ms. Koppell served as deputy assistant secretary for international affairs of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. She was also special assistant to the administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), director of the USAID climate change program, and has worked for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. She received her M.A. in public policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and her B.A. from Cornell University.