Please join us for an update on the ongoing war in Ethiopia.  Doug Mercado, a lecturer at SPIA, is just back as the team leader for USAID’s Tigray Task Force in Ethiopia, where the conflict is pushing hundreds of thousands from their homes.  This will be an update on the conflict, the crisis, and also a chance to talk with Doug about humanitarian work.

Doug’s 30 year career in international humanitarian assistance and post-disaster recovery has included work for the United Nations, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Organization of American States and various non-governmental organizations. He has managed humanitarian relief operations, refugee assistance programs and disaster recovery efforts in more than two dozen countries including Liberia, Iraq, Angola, Sudan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, Eritrea, Sri Lanka and Nigeria. Mr. Mercado recently completed an assignment as the emergency coordinator for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in the Bahamas in response to Hurricane Dorian.  In 2018, he coordinated WFP’s emergency program for Venezuelan migrants in Colombia. Mr. Mercado led the US government’s humanitarian response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2015 and served as the Humanitarian Advisor at the US Mission to the United Nations in New York under Ambassador Susan Rice where he directed US government humanitarian policy initiatives at the United Nations.

Doug was awarded a Master of Public Policy from Princeton University, a Master of Arts in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and a Bachelor of Arts in Latin American Studies and History from the College of William and Mary in Virginia.

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