Jessica Reitz Curtin serves as DT Global’s Vice President for Learning and Innovation in the United States. She is a political transition and governance expert with fifteen years of experience managing programing and designing frameworks and systems for monitoring and evaluation, learning, research and analytics. Prior to joining DT Global, Jessica spent ten years with USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) managing complex, highly visible stabilization, countering violent extremism, and civil society programs in fragile and transitional environments. She served as Acting Chief of OTI’s Field Programs Division, overseeing OTI’s programming globally, four years managing OTI’s programming in Middle East, and served overseas in Haiti and Afghanistan.
During and following graduate school, Jessica was an associate with the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School where she conducted research on intelligence policy and religion and conflict. She also did political fundraising for USAction, a progressive grassroots organization promoting investment in America's future, and fundraising and program development for Free the Slaves, a non-profit organization combating human trafficking and modern slavery worldwide. She is a Fellow with the Truman National Security Project and a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
If you could meet any living person for a chat over a shared dinner, who would you pick and why?
Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I have always admired Archbishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela for their remarkable anti-apartheid and human rights activism and leadership in South Africa, and I would love to hear first-hand what it was like to lead the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and be responsible for transforming a nation.
What’s your favorite place of all the places you’ve travelled?
Istanbul, Turkey.
