Our Team
We’re practitioners working to shift power and center people in development and humanitarian work. We partner with changemakers, build bridges, and champion local solutions that put communities first.
Steering Committee
A global group of experienced leaders who guide our strategy, challenge our thinking, and keep us accountable to the people and communities at the heart of this work.
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Laura Alvarez
Asunción, Paraguay
Laura Alvarez is a sustainability professional advancing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives in the private sector. She has more than 20 years of experience in sustainable development, diplomacy, social project management, and institutional capacity strengthening across the public, multilateral, and international development sectors. Her expertise includes monitoring, evaluation and learning, strategic partnerships, localization, and locally led development. Laura believes the most sustainable and equitable solutions are designed and led by local organizations and communities, with decision-making authority and resources residing with those closest to the challenges and opportunities.
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Nkula Edward Goma
Lusaka, Zambia
Nkula Edward Goma is Associate Director and Partnership Specialist at Growth Innovation and DevService (GIDS Hub), a Zambian social enterprise advancing locally led development. He brings more than 15 years of experience in program management, advocacy, communications, organizational development, and local partnerships, including roles with USAID Zambia and Diakonia Zambia. His expertise spans civil society strengthening, governance, extractive-sector accountability, and communication for development. Nkula holds a master’s degree in Communication for Development and believes in translating development principles into practical, locally led strategies that empower communities, strengthen institutions, and deliver lasting impact.
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Zeeste Jahanzaib
Karachi, Pakistan
Zeeste Jahanzaib has managed complex development programs across Pakistan and Afghanistan for over twenty-three years, including thirteen with USAID and the U.S. State Department. Her work has spanned peacebuilding, youth engagement, governance, and locally led development, including a countering violent extremism grants program that supported more than 450 community-driven activities. What stayed with her was smaller: a youth-led debate and sports tournament in a conflict-prone area, still running years after the grant ended. When communities define their own problems, ownership follows, and ownership is what makes change last.
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Sarah Maniates
Washington, DC, USA
Sarah Maniates became convinced of locally led development the hard way: first as a Peace Corps volunteer, then as a USAID prime implementing partner working with local organizations, watching traditional development projects fail in familiar ways. She was a member of the Local Works team in Washington, working primarily with field offices across eastern and southern Africa. She now works in program management for leadership development programs and remains engaged in conversations about what the development sector rebuilds into, and whether it can be more locally led.
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Duong Nguyen Duc
Hanoi, Vietnam
Duong Nguyen Duc is an international development practitioner based in Vietnam with more than 25 years of experience in public-sector reform, health systems, environmental governance, organizational development, and monitoring, evaluation and learning. With USAID/Vietnam he held senior technical and leadership roles championing collective action as a practical approach to locally led development. In this space he brought together local governments, civil society, universities, businesses, and community networks to co-design solutions to environmental, climate, and public health challenges. Duong believes sustainable development is achieved not by transferring projects to local organizations, but by enabling local institutions and communities to lead, adapt and innovate within their own contexts.
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Leon Nsiku
Steering Committee Secretary
Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Leon Nsiku has spent fifteen years working on governance, peacebuilding, and locally led development across the DRC, the Great Lakes region, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, and the Horn of Africa. He has advised diplomatic missions, civil society networks, and donor programs on conflict analysis, civic space, and institutional strengthening, and he led USAID’s localization efforts in the DRC. He currently works in policy and program advisory. He also serves on the advisory boards of two social enterprises, working on youth entrepreneurship and risk management across mining, health, and agriculture.
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Manju Thapa Tuladhar
Steering Committee Chair
Kathmandu, Nepal
Manju Thapa Tuladhar is a senior Gender Equality, Disability, and Social Inclusion (GEDSI) adviser. Over several decades, including in a senior advisory role with USAID, she has advanced intersectional inclusion across governance, health, education, economic growth, climate, and humanitarian response. She holds a doctorate in public policy from the University of Birmingham. As Co-Founder of the Nepal Local Works Foundation, she champions locally led development, inclusive leadership, and systems-level change. As a reformer dedicated to shifting power and centering people in development and humanitarian work, Dr Manju represents Nepal to the Movement for Community Led Development (mcld.org). Manju champions locally led change because she believes lasting progress requires shifting power and expanding leadership opportunities for women and marginalized groups.
Champions
Champions are senior leaders and allies who believe in what we’re building and are working to advance it by opening doors and lending their voices to locally led development.
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George Biddle
George Biddle is a humanitarian and development expert with over three decades of experience in crisis response, grassroots development, peacebuilding, and conflict mitigation.
Biddle is currently the chairman of World Connect, a nonprofit organization that invests in communities and their leaders to advance self-sustaining development on their terms.
From 2000 to 2015, Biddle was the executive vice president of the International Rescue Committee (IRC). He served as the IRC’s acting president from May to July 2002 and is now a board member. Previously, he served as the vice president of the International Crisis Group, an organization that works through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict. Biddle was also president of the Institute for Central American Studies, an organization he founded in 1989 to assist post-Cold War Central America in its transition from violent conflict to peace and democracy.
Biddle has testified before Congress and presented at the UN Security Council and the European Parliament, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves on several nonprofit boards. He received his AB from Harvard and MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
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Susan Reichle
Susan Reichle is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer with more than three decades of leadership in international development.
She served as President and CEO of the International Youth Foundation, where she led the revitalization of the organization’s mission, vision, and values and guided a new strategy centered on youth agency, economic opportunity, and systems change.
Before joining the International Youth Foundation, Susan spent 26 years in leadership positions at the U.S. Agency for International Development, both overseas and in Washington, D.C. As Counselor to the Agency and USAID’s most senior Foreign Service Officer, she advised senior leadership on global development policy and management. Her work included overseeing the Agency’s Local Solutions and Youth initiatives, spearheading its first Youth in Development Policy, and leading efforts related to democracy, conflict, and humanitarian assistance.
Susan is a Champion of Local Works Global because her career reflects a deep commitment to expanding agency, strengthening local leadership, and changing the systems that shape development outcomes. She brings an exceptional understanding of how institutions, policies, and partnerships can move resources and decision-making closer to the people most affected, as well as a powerful voice for a more locally led and accountable approach to development.
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Sharon Van Pelt
Sharon Van Pelt is a global development and philanthropy leader with more than 30 years of experience in locally led development, democratic governance, peacebuilding, and systems change.
Sharon has held senior leadership positions with USAID, Chemonics International, Creative Associates International, and FHI 360, shaping strategies and programs across more than 35 countries and strengthening the institutions, partnerships, and systems that enable locally driven change.
Throughout her career, Sharon has focused on changing how development institutions understand, support, and invest in local leadership. Her commitment to locally led development took root while working alongside Guatemalan communities and institutions to implement the country’s Peace Accords. She later co-founded and now co-chairs the U.S. Thinking and Working Politically Community of Practice, a global coalition advancing approaches grounded in a deep understanding of local systems, relationships, incentives, and perspectives. Drawing on this experience, Sharon also provided substantive input to USAID’s 2022 Local Capacity Strengthening Policy. She brings particular expertise in local leadership, political economy and systems analysis, adaptive development, institutional change, and philanthropy. She serves on the Board of The International Foundation and is a Certified Impact Philanthropy Advisor.
Sharon is a Champion of Local Works Global because her work reflects a longstanding conviction that people closest to a challenge should have the power, resources, and agency to shape the solutions that affect their lives. Drawing on experience across donor, implementing, and philanthropic institutions, she brings a systems perspective to LWG’s efforts to shift power and resources toward local actors and strengthen the conditions for genuinely locally led change.
Core Staff
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Dan Grant
CO-FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Meet Dan
Dan leads Local Works Global’s strategy, partnerships, and growth. He provides principled, grounded leadership at the center of the organization. -
Jackie Greene
CO-FOUNDER & DIRECTOR OF STRATEGY
Meet Jackie
Jackie is our intellectual architect, ensuring work remains grounded in learning, systems thinking, and locally led practice. -
Sumitra Manandhar
SENIOR ADVISOR AND INTERNSHIP/MENTORSHIP PROGRAM COORDINATOR
Meet Sumitra
Sumitra brings more than two decades of experience designing, managing, and scaling international development programs. -
Shannon Meehan
CO-FOUNDER & DIRECTOR OF ADVISORY SERVICES
Meet Shannon
Shannon anchors our advisory and partnership work, translating locally led principles into innovative investment strategies, financing models, and cross-sector systems change. -
Meg Keely Smith
CO-FOUNDER & DIRECTOR OF LEARNING & ENGAGEMENT
Meet Meg
Meg is Local Works Global’s deep thinker and thought leader, translating learning into strategy, communications, and impact. -
Arjun Tasker
CO-FOUNDER & SENIOR PARTNERSHIPS ADVISOR
Meet Arjun
An external ambassador for Local Works Global, Arjun expands our visibility and generates strategic partnerships.
Local Works Global is a fiscally sponsored project of Accountability Lab, an independent 501(c)(3). Our fiscal sponsorship provides nonprofit compliance, donation processing, and tax-deductibility for charitable contributions, while allowing Local Works Global to lead programmatic strategy and execution.
Local Works Global is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or funded by the United States Government or any of its agencies. Any references to prior activities of Local Works in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are provided solely for historical context. Local Works Global has no legal or financial relationship to any government body.