Aaron Chassy’s nearly 35-year career has spanned over 40 countries and included stints as a USAID democracy and governance Foreign Service Officer, Chief of Party and IDIQ manager, and 10 years as a senior manager for INGOs. He has designed, implemented, and evaluated projects in multiple sectors, including community-based protected area management, civic engagement, democratic local governance; and people-to-people peacebuilding. In all these experiences, Aaron has insisted that, as implementers, we must model the behavior we demand of others. He has advocated consistently for U.S. foreign policy and assistance programs that have built on local best practices not only ensuring relevance, effectiveness, and sustainability but also reinforcing mutuality, subsidiarity, inclusion, and equity. He applied these values while leading Catholic Relief Service’s Equity, Inclusion and Peacebuilding team to produce alternatives to donor-funded approaches, which were based in counterterrorism policies. His innovations included integrating psychosocial support and democratic local governance into people-to-people peacebuilding, not only achieving greater levels of social cohesion but also contributing to more responsive, accountable governance. In addition to a Master of Public Policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Aaron also holds a double BA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.