Chair of Millennium Challenge Corporation Board, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Names Charles O. Sethness to Carry out Temporarily the Duties of Chief Executive Officer

Washington, D.C. — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Chair of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Board of Directors, today named Charles O. Sethness to temporarily carry out the duties of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) beginning August 9, 2005. Mr. Sethness will execute the duties of the CEO until a new CEO is named and confirmed. MCC CEO Paul Applegarth in June announced his resignation, effective August 8, 2005.

“MCC is a solid organization of dedicated, professional staff, with a strong sense of mission and a vast amount of development expertise,” said Mr. Sethness. “MCC will continue to build on the progress made in our first 18 months, working with our partner countries to reduce poverty through economic growth.”

Mr. Sethness, MCC's Vice President of Monitoring and Evaluation, is a seasoned development expert who joined the MCC in July 2004 when the corporation was six months old. For fourteen years prior to joining MCC, Mr. Sethness was the Chief Financial Officer at the Inter-American Development Bank. He has also been Director of the Capital Markets Projects Department at the International Finance Corporation, Assistant Secretary for Domestic Finance at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Associate Dean for External Relations at the Harvard Business School, a Managing Director of Morgan Stanley Inc., and U.S. Executive Director at the World Bank Group.

Mr. Sethness received his A.B. in English and Special Program in the Humanities from Princeton University . He earned an M.B.A. with High Distinction from Harvard Business School where he was a Baker Scholar.

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Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a U.S. government corporation designed to work with some of the poorest countries in the world, is based on the principle that aid is most effective when it reinforces good governance, economic freedom, and investments in people that promote economic growth and elimination of extreme poverty.