Future of Foreign Assistance Task Force
About IGP’s Future of Foreign Assistance Task Force
Led by Secretary Jacob J. Lew, Alice Albright, Ambassador David Satterfield, and Sonali Korde, the Future of Foreign Assistance Task Force is a collaborative partnership between IGP and Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy that aims to assess geopolitical shifts, development challenges, competitive dynamics, and emerging opportunities to develop a pragmatic framework for US foreign assistance in an era of strategic competition.
IGP’s Future of Foreign Assistance Task Force is a bipartisan task force that brings together senior leaders and subject matter experts from across the world and across a broad ideological spectrum to generate recommendations on high-level strategic approaches to international assistance that can inform future, more granular implementation policies. Through evolving discussions, this task force will clarify where sustained US leadership in the development space is essential to protecting American interests and competing effectively with strategic rivals—and how that leadership should be structured to maximize impact. The task force will also consider how to articulate the strategic rationale for foreign assistance to policymakers and the public.
Task Force Activity
The Future of Foreign Assistance Task Force aims to reposition foreign assistance as a disciplined strategic investment in American interests while preserving US humanitarian leadership.
Our Team
Secretary Jacob J. Lew is a professor of international and public affairs at SIPA. In the Biden administration, he served as US ambassador to Israel. Previously, he served as the 76th Secretary of the Treasury and White House chief of staff in the Obama administration. Lew has also served in numerous roles at the White House and in Congress, including twice as director of the Office of Management and Budget, as well as in private sector roles at Citigroup and New York University. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and a member of the bar in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. He holds an AB from Harvard University and a JD from Georgetown University Law Center.
Alice Albright is the former CEO of the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the Global Partnership for Education. She helped establish the field of innovative development finance, beginning at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. As founder and principal of Acadia Advisory, Albright advises philanthropic and development organizations as they navigate a shifting global landscape, supporting institutions as they consider how development models and financing approaches may need to evolve in the years ahead. Albright has served on two G7 Gender Equality Advisory Councils, appointed by the president of France for the 2019 G7 and by the prime minister of the UK for the 2021 G7. She serves on the Board of the National Democratic Institute, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and sits on the Food Security Leadership Council.
Ambassador David M. Satterfield is the director of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and leads the institute's Edward P. Djerejian Center for the Middle East. He is also the Janice and Robert McNair Chair in Public Policy. He has more than four decades of diplomatic and leadership experience, including service as US Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa, Assistant Secretary of State, National Security Council staff director, and ambassador to Lebanon and Turkey and chargé d’affaires in Iraq and Egypt. From October 2023 to May 2024, President Joe Biden appointed him US Special Envoy for Middle East Humanitarian Issues to lead US diplomacy in addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Sonali Korde is the MD Anderson Visiting Fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, specializing in humanitarian affairs, international development, global health, and foreign policy. She is also a senior Middle East advisor for All Hands and Hearts and an adjunct clinical instructor at the Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Global Surgery. Korde serves on the advisory councils of two NGOs focused on health and humanitarian assistance. Previously, she served as Assistant to the Administrator and led USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance. Korde also served as acting deputy assistant administrator at USAID’s Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs, where she managed strategic engagement with Congress. She has served on the National Security Council (NSC) staff as director of Global Health and Development and was a foreign affairs fellow in the office of Congresswoman Nita Lowey.
