The new director of USAID’s Office of Acquisitions and Assistance (M/OAA) has returned from a stint at NASA. He hopes artificial intelligence can improve USAID’s procurement practices — and wants his staff to take more risks.
For Jami Rodgers, taking over as director of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s main procurement office is a homecoming. It’s also a return to planet Earth.
For the past year, Rodgers has been at NASA, serving as director of the space agency’s Procurement Strategic Operations Division. Now, after five years away from USAID, he has been tapped to fill what many consider one of the most important jobs at the world’s largest bilateral aid agency. MORE