Adventures with USAID

Jill Jarvi grew up in Aurora and recently returned to the Iron Range after many years of living in Washington, D.C., and overseas. She has spent more than 25 years working in international development — helping communities around the world rebuild and strengthen themselves after conflict or major political change — both as a U.S. government employee and as a government contractor with various non-profits and consulting firms.

Much of her career was spent working on behalf of the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, the federal agency responsible for administering foreign aid and development assistance abroad. Her work focused on helping countries stabilize and rebuild democratic institutions after conflict or political upheaval. That included supporting independent news outlets and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Egypt during and after the 2011 revolution, helping rebuild independent media in the countries of the former Yugoslavia after their wars ended, and providing training and career development for professionals in various fields following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Most recently, Jarvi led a USAID-funded program in the Philippines called Opportunity 2.0, which helped out-of-school youth get a second chance at education and job training. Before that, she led similar USAID-funded projects around the world — in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where she worked on improving STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) curricula in public education; in Serbia, where she supported independent journalism; in the West Bank, where she ran a youth leadership and education program; and in Egypt, where she supported local civic organizations.

Jarvi holds a master's degree in International Affairs from The George Washington University and a bachelor's degree in Russian Language and Literature from the University of Minnesota.