Mission Director

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Karen R. Hilliard

Dr. Karen Hilliard was sworn in on September 4, 2012 as the new Mission Director for Armenia for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Deputy Administrator Donald Steinberg administered the oath of office.

As Director of the Mission, Dr. Hilliard will oversee a project portfolio of approximately $26 million annually in support of Armenia's democracy and governance reform, economic development, and health and social reform.

A 23-year veteran of the Foreign Service, Dr. Hilliard holds the Senior Foreign Service rank of Counselor.   Her most recent post was in Mongolia, where she served as the Acting USAID Repre-sentative.  She served as Mission Director to Jamaica from 2007-2011, managing a $30 million program in economic reform, de-mocracy and governance, and investing in people.   Under her leadership, the Mission leveraged an additional $12 million through public/private partnerships.  From 2006-2007 she was Director of the Office of Strategic Planning and Budgeting for the Agency’s Bureau for Global Health in Washington, and from 2003-2006 she was Deputy Regional Director for Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus.   Her previous posts include Haiti, Malawi, Nicaragua, Oman and Egypt.

Over the course of her Foreign Service career, Dr. Hilliard has managed projects in diverse technical areas including health, population and nutrition, environment, small and micro-enterprise development, education and training, and democracy and govern-ance.   She has extensive experience in strategic planning, project design and program evaluation.  She served as subject matter ex-pert on two successive Agency task forces on personnel reform.

Dr. Hilliard holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Northern Illi-nois University as well as Master’s degrees in Public Administration and Latin American Studies, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of New Mexico.   She is a two-time Fulbright Scholar.  Prior to joining the Foreign Service, she was Assistant Professor of Public Administration at Florida State University and Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Arizona. She has published numerous articles on public administration, personnel management and international development.

She speaks Spanish, French and Portuguese and enjoys travel, cooking, reading, tennis and horseback riding. Her three children attend school in the United States.