Isobel Coleman

Deputy Administrator Coleman is responsible for program and policy oversight, including of the Agency’s Regional and Pillar Bureaus. As Deputy Administrator, she guides USAID’s crisis response, leads its work in countering the influence of China and Russia, and supports efforts to address the root causes of irregular migration. She also is responsible for overseeing Agency efforts to prevent famine and future pandemics; strengthen education, health, democracy, and economic growth; and improve responses to climate change.

Ambassador Isobel Coleman is a foreign policy and global development expert with more than 25 years of experience working in government, the private sector, and nonprofits. Most recently, she served on the Biden Transition Team, leading the review of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. From 2014-2017, she was the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations for Management, Reform and Special Political Affairs.

During that time, she represented the United States in the UN General Assembly on budgetary matters and in the UN Security Council on Africa and peacekeeping issues. From 2018-2020, she was the Chief Operating Officer of GiveDirectly, an international non-profit tackling poverty by providing unconditional cash transfers to the extreme poor.

Dr. Coleman spent more than a decade as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where she directed CFR’s Women and Foreign Policy program. She graduated from Princeton University and earned MPhil and DPhil degrees in International Relations from Oxford University, which she attended on a Marshall Scholarship. She started her career at McKinsey & Co. in New York, becoming a partner in the firm’s financial institutions group.