President Barack Obama has nominated Gayle Smith, senior director of development and democracy at the National Security Council since 2009, as the next U.S. Agency for International Development administrator.Smith has led the U.S. government’s international programs to address food security, economic development, health and government transparency issues, the White House said Thursday.
She is also a special assistant to the president and served as the council’s senior director for African affairs from 1998 to 2001.
Before she joined NSC, Smith was an adviser to the chief of staff and administrator of USAID for four years.
She also served in a senior fellow role at the Center for American Progress, where she helped found the organization’s Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network and Enough Project as well as managed its Sustainable Security Project.
She also worked as a journalist and in multiple non-governmental relief and development organizations in Africa for nearly two decades.
