Tom Staal is the Acting Mission Director for USAID in Lebanon.  He has spent most of his career working overseas in international development. He has worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) since 1988, beginning in Sudan as an Emergency Program Officer. In the early 1990s, he worked in the USAID regional office in Kenya, managing food aid and doing project development throughout eastern and southern Africa. From 1996 to 2002, Mr. Staal worked in the USAID West Bank and Gaza program, providing assistance to the Palestinians, focusing on water supply projects, as well as local community development.

Following the US invasion of Iraq, Mr. Staal went to Iraq for a year in 2003/04, serving as the USAID Regional Representative for Southern Iraq, overseeing all USAID projects in that part of the country. He also served a year as the Deputy Director of the Food For Peace Office in Washington and spent a year studying at the National War College. Most recently, he was the Director of the Iraq Reconstruction Office in Washington.

Before joining USAID, Mr. Staal worked for World Vision International as their Representative in Sudan in the mid-1980s. He also worked for ARAMCO in Saudi Arabia in the late 1970s and the early 80s in their government relations department.

Tom Staal has a Master’s Degree in Comparative Politics (Middle East focus) from Columbia University and an M.Sc. in National Strategic Security Studies from the National Defense University. Since his parents were missionaries in the Middle East, he grew up in Iraq and Kuwait and attended boarding school in India.