New director for the U.S. Agency for International Development

WASHINGTON, Aug 17 – If all good things come in twos, what can top two mission directors in one family?
Roberta Mahoney is the new mission director to Albania and her husband, David McCloud, is the new mission director to Bosnia and Herzegovina. They received their promotions after being sworn in together by Henrietta Fore, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) administrator.
The couple’s lives have followed similar paths, before and after they married in 1976, after meeting at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Both were Peace Corps volunteers in Fiji and both joined USAID as international development interns in the 1980s — Mahoney joining in 1984 and McCloud in 1988. Now, they head missions in nearby, almost neighboring nations.
In Albania, Mahoney will direct a mission in a nation the administrator called a valued peacekeeping partner in the war against terrorism that “plays a vital role in the Balkans promoting peace, security and ethnic reconciliation.”
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, said Fore, McCloud takes control of a mission where USAID has invested more than $1 billion since 1995, restoring that nation’s infrastructure and economy and “strengthening the market chain that resulted in more than 1,500 jobs and investments in agriculture.”
During her career, Mahoney served as an economics officer in both USAID/Kenya and in USAID/Malawi, as well as an associate mission director in USAID’s mission in Egypt. In Washington, she served in several positions within USAID, including those in its Africa, Europe and Eurasia Bureaus. Her most recent position was in USAID’s Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean as director of the Office for Resources for Sustainable Development. Mahoney earned a master’s degrees in regional planning from the University of California, Los Angeles and natural resource economics and international trade from the University of Wisconsin.
McCloud has been a program officer in Egypt, Malawi and Kenya and held senior positions in the Africa and Management Bureaus in Washington. He was most recently director of the Middle East Affairs Office before becoming mission director. He earned master’s degrees in African studies and public administration from the University of California, Los Angeles.
The American people, through the U.S. Agency for International Development, have provided economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide for nearly 50 years.