Robert S. Blank Forum, PCPSE, 2nd floor,
133 South 36th St

Virtual attendees may join via Zoom. Please click here to register.

The suspension of U.S. foreign aid marks a significant shift in global development policy, creating major challenges for recipient countries. The Penn Development Research Initiative – DevLab@Penn (PDRI-DevLab) and Penn Global at the University of Pennsylvania invite you to the first of two webinars exploring the impact of this rollback on people and institutions both in the U.S. and abroad.

The first webinar, taking place on Wednesday, March 5, from 12:00 to 1:30 PM, will feature researchers and policy experts discussing three key areas where U.S. foreign assistance has played a vital role: health, environment, and governance. Panelists will examine the gaps left by the suspension, its implications for recipient countries, and the lessons learned from research on foreign aid—along with what remains unknown due to its withdrawal.

Our goal is to deepen public understanding of what foreign aid truly entails and to highlight the real-world stakes of its suspension from the perspectives of those directly engaged in the work.

The second webinar, on Wednesday, March 19, will shift the focus to recipient governments and in-country partners, offering insights from those experiencing the consequences firsthand.

This event is co-sponsored by PennGlobal, the Behavioral Economics and Global Health Insights (BEGIN) Lab, the Environmental Innovations Initiative, the Center for Global Health, the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics, and Perry World House.

This webinar is open to both the Penn community and the public. We hope you’ll join us for these critical discussions.

Our Panelists

Alexander Pfaff is a Professor of Public Policy, Economics and the Environment at Duke University. He studies how economic development interacts with natural resources and the environment. His focus is designing environment and development policies to support choices by individuals and groups that protect nature, reduce damaging environmental exposures, and improve livelihoods. Dr. Pfaff received his Bachelor’s in Applied Mathematics and Economics from Yale University and Ph.D. in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Harsha Thirumurthy is the Division Chief of Health Policy and a Professor in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also Associate Director at the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics and a Research Associate at Penn’s Population Studies Center. Dr. Thirumurthy’s interests lie at the intersection of economics and public health. A major focus of his research has been to use insights from economics and psychology to design and evaluate interventions to achieve better health outcomes in low-income settings. He has led numerous randomized trials of behavioral interventions, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. His research has also evaluated the population-level effects of large-scale health initiatives as well as economic policies like cash transfer programs. He has published peer-reviewed articles in leading journals in economics, public health, and medicine. In 2020, Dr. Thirumurthy co-founded the Indlela nudge unit to strengthen local research capacity in behavioral economics and health in South Africa. Dr. Thirumurthy completed a PhD in economics at Yale University.

Jennifer Kates is senior vice president and director of the Global Health & HIV Policy Program at KFF, where she oversees policy analysis and research focused on the U.S. government’s role in global health and on the global and domestic HIV epidemics. Widely regarded as an expert in the field, she regularly publishes and presents on global health and HIV policy issues and is particularly known for her work analyzing donor government investments in global health; assessing and mapping the U.S. government’s global health architecture, programs, and funding; and tracking and analyzing major U.S. HIV programs and financing, and key trends in the HIV epidemic, an area she has been working in for close to 30 years. Dr. Kates has served on numerous federal and private sector advisory committees on global health and HIV issues. She holds a Bachelor’s from Dartmouth College, a Master in Public Affairs from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and a Master’s in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts. She received her Ph.D. in Health Policy from George Washington University.

Rosarie Tucci was, until recently, the  Director for USAID’s Democracy, Rights and Governance (DRG) Center. She has worked in a variety of positions supporting human rights and issues disproportionately affecting excluded populations. Most recently, she served as the director for Inclusive Societies, Peace Processes and Reconciliation at the U.S. Institute of Peace (2017-2021), deputy director for the Democracy, Rights and Governance (DRG) Center at USAID (2015-2017) and senior advisor to the Deputy Administrator of USAID (2011- 2015). Tucci has worked to advance projects and policy on issues such as enhancing civic space, countering trafficking in persons, Rights of LGBTI and persons with disabilities, youth engagement, and atrocity prevention. She also provided strategic guidance on programs in countries such as Colombia, South Sudan, Ukraine, CAR and Yemen. Tucci was a Fulbright Scholar in Sofia, Bulgaria examining the development of the human rights movement in a transitional democracy. She holds a Master’s of Law in International Human Rights Law from the University of Nottingham and a Bachelor’s in Political Science and Communications from Boston College.

Catherine (Kate) Weaver is an Associate Professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs (LBJ) School of Public Affairs and Co-Director of Innovations for Peace and Development at The University of Texas at Austin. She is a distinguished scholar and founder of the Next Generation Scholars Program at the Strauss Center for International Security & Law. She previously served as LBJ’s associate dean for students, associate dean for academics, and graduate advisor for the Ph.D. and MGPS programs. Dr. Weaver researches transparency in international development aid, reforming global economic governance, and the politics of data. She has developed methods to track and dynamically geomap aid and climate adaptation and is currently completing two book projects on Policy Hype Cycles: Global Development and the Transparency Revolution and Representation in Global Governance. Dr. Weaver co-directs (with Drs. Daniel Nielson) Innovations for Peace and Development, an interdisciplinary research lab devoted to alleviating global poverty and peacebuilding. She currently serves on the Board of Advocates for the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty, and previously served on the Board of Directors of Bread for the World.  In 2022-23, Dr. Weaver was the Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Global Economic Governance, University of Waterloo and a Visiting Research Fellow, Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, Brown University. Dr Weaver holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Alix Peterson Zwane is executive in residence with the James E. Rogers Energy Access Project at Duke University at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability. She is also a Newhouse Visiting Professor of the Practice at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. Prior to joining the Nicholas Institute, Alix was the first chief executive officer of the Global Innovation Fund, a hybrid investment vehicle that accelerates evidence-based innovation through early-stage debt and equity investing, as well as grantmaking. GIF is backed by leading bilateral aid agencies, corporates, and foundations and contributes to filling the pioneer gap between development assistance and development finance. Alix has over 20 years of experience advancing the agenda of evidence-based aid and international development as an investor, a social entrepreneur, and an innovator. She was the first employee and executive director at Evidence Action, a nonprofit that develops service delivery models to scale evidence-based programs. Alix has also advocated for evidence-based philanthropy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google.org, and served on the faculty of the department of agricultural and resource economics at University of California, Berkeley. Alix holds a Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University and is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. She has served appointments as a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development and at the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University.