Thank you, Hari, for the kind introduction. It is great to see so many familiar faces here today from USAID, the State Department and other organizations. I’m happy to offer a few thoughts on the important responsibility our agencies have for managing foreign assistance effectively to help achieve our nation’s foreign policy and development objectives.

As Deputy Secretary Higginbottom stated, foreign assistance works best when we collaborate in pursuit of clearly defined goals. With more than two dozen US Government departments and agencies working with developing countries, coordination of all US Government foreign assistance is essential. As we consider the future of foreign assistance, I’d like to quickly highlight five of the best practices that we at USAID believe have been and will continue to be essential to our foreign assistance program.

The first is sound Strategic Planning. The 2010 QDDR introduced Integrated Country Strategies, developed in the field under the leadership of the Chief of Mission. The ICS articulates shared foreign policy goals that can be achieved through the efforts of the multiple USG agencies at Post. USAID, in turn, has implemented the Country Development Cooperation Strategies, which guide the programming of development resources in each country with a USAID program. Together, the ICS and the CDCS form a collaborative approach to ensuring that foreign assistance resources are well managed and achieve our desired impacts.

A second important element of a strong foreign assistance program is Selectivity and Focus. While pilots are important, we believe that scattering all kinds of little projects around countries does not achieve scale and does not lead to problems being permanently solved. As a result, since 2010, USAID has reduced the number of program areas in which we work by 40 percent – from 818 total program areas in Fiscal Year 2010 to 490 in FY 2015. We expect this trend to continue in the FY 2017 budget. Also, as we worked on Presidential Initiatives, our work in those sectors has become more focused, phasing out of agriculture in 22 countries at the same time that we were standing up a huge effort on Feed the Future, for example. This winnowing process is necessary to drive sustainable development by prioritizing our work and by focusing our resources in the places where they can be most effective.

Third, is Evaluation. The USAID Evaluation Policy sets high standards for ensuring quality, relevance and transparency. It builds on past USAID evaluation practices and brings the Agency up-to-date with international standards. Since the adoption of the policy in 2010, USAID has increased its number of evaluations to more than 230 a year. These evaluations hold us accountable for the funds we manage and help us learn about how best to achieve the development outcomes we seek.

The fourth topic is Transparency. In support of the Obama Administration’s unparalleled emphasis on transparency and openness across the government, USAID continues to expand the amount of foreign assistance data it makes publicly available.

Finally, I want to touch on the importance of Leveraging. We all know that Official Development Assistance is becoming an ever smaller proportion of the resources available to countries to promote growth. We must use our assistance resources in smart new ways to leverage the power of the private sector and to help countries mobilize their own domestic resources in pursuit of development outcomes. That is why, for example, we designed Power Africa to capitalize on more than $30 billion of private sector commitments in energy to focus on removing roadblocks to private sector investment, and did not design it to spend US taxpayer money on building all the needed power plants. And, it is why we have formed more than 1,500 partnerships with over 3,500 distinct partners with a total value in excess of $20 billion. And, it is why we have worked hard to gear up our support for countries to increase their own domestic resources.

We collaborate on all these things with F and will continue to do so in the days ahead. I want to thank all the F staff who come from both State and USAID for all your hard work, as well as the USAID BRM team.

Now I’d like to turn it over to our panelists, who will have a conversation on “The Future Business Model of Aid.”

It is my pleasure to introduce our moderator, Elmira Bayrasli, author, entrepreneur, and cofounder of Foreign Policy Interrupted.

Joining her on the panel are:

• Nancy Lindborg, President, U.S. Institute for Peace;
• Carlos Cornejo, MasterCard International’s Senior Vice President for New Consumers, Global Products and Solutions;
• Michael Klosson, Vice President for Policy and Humanitarian Response at Save the Children; and
• Alex Thier, founder and CEO of strategy and consulting firm Triple Helix.

There will be a question and answer session following the panel.

Thank you all for joining us.