Development Agency’s Chief Innovator to Step Down
By
Joseph Marks
Maura O’Neill championed private sector funding models for innovations in international development.
The Chief Innovation Officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development, Maura O’Neill, will leave her post in June.
O’Neill announced her departure on Twitter Wednesday.
During three-and-a-half years on the job, O’Neill led numerous projects focused on bringing ideas and expertise from outside government to bear on problems in international development. Most notably, O’Neill launched Development Innovation Ventures, a Sillicon Valley-style staged funding model for new international development grants.
This year, O’Neill’s office took on a team of Presidential Innovation fellows focused on the Development Innovation Ventures program. The fellows are a team of non-government entrepreneurs who have six months to “help enable the U.S. government to identify, test, and scale breakthrough solutions to the world’s toughest problems.”