Elizabeth Winger Shevock is a for USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) with international experience working across regions as diverse as Latin America, South Asia and Africa. She began her career with OTI in 1998 in Bogota, Colombia as "Interim Resident Coordinator" on the first OTI Colombia program, managing grants with the Salesian Missions and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), providing ‘peace grants’ to conflict prone communities in guerrilla-controlled areas. She supported the Mission Director on peace process reporting and in preparation for the major scale up of Plan Colombia, a turning point for the country's long running conflict with the guerrillas.
She later worked for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), where she developed and managed grants in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru with an emphasis on human rights, rule of law and strengthening of civil society and local governance. In 2007, Elizabeth rejoined OTI, where she served as Deputy Country Representative in Colombia at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, supporting the implementation of a stabilization program to support the Government of Colombia’s efforts against the FARC insurgency. She returned to Washington DC in 2008 and served as a DC-based Latin America & the Caribbean (LAC) Program Manager and Deputy Team Leader managing civil society support, freedom of expression, early recovery and stabilization programs in Cuba, Colombia and Haiti, and Pakistan (FATA/KP, Karachi and Northern Sindh). She served as LAC Bureau Senior Program Officer for the Office of Cuban Affairs and provided surge support to the Burma and Lebanon programs. She was most recently the West Africa Team Leader, responsible for programs in Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Chad, Burkina Faso, and a program cross-learning platform based in Accra, Ghana. Elizabeth's previous experience also includes working as an aide to the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, where she wrote speeches and coordinated international outreach, and as a high school Spanish teacher. She now serves as a Senior Policy Advisor to USAID/OTI.
Elizabeth is a fluent Spanish speaker and holds a Master of Arts in International Commerce from George Mason University and a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies/Political Science from West Virginia University. She resides in Alexandria, Virginia with her husband and three teenaged sons.