Maura O'Neill
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Dr. Maura O’Neill is the Chief Innovation Officer and Senior Counselor to the Administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development. In the public, private, and academic sectors, Maura has focused on sustainable energy development as well as entrepreneurship and innovation. Before coming to USAID, she served as a Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor in the U.S. Department of Agriculture as well as Chief of Staff for U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell. Maura has started four companies in the energy, education, and high technology areas and was named the Greater Seattle Business Person of the Year in 1989. She has received MBA’s from both Columbia University and University of California at Berkeley and serves on the faculty Berkeley. Maura also completed her PhD at the University of Washington where her discovery research was on how narrow-mindedness occurs and the errors it leads to in decision making.

Blog Entries by Maura O'Neill

The Hunt for Impact Investments

Comments | Posted April 30, 2012 | 12:00 AM

Let's talk deal flow. The top investors from Silicon Valley to New York to London know that deal flow is the secret to getting the best returns. If a boat is financial capital, and deals are the fish, investors want to be floating in a river where the fish are...

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Crowd-Sourcing Development Innovation in India

Comments | Posted December 20, 2011 | 4:11 PM

India has become synonymous with innovation. Inexpensive mHealth applications. The Tata Nano. Low cost eye surgery. These are just a handful of the frugal innovations that India has developed and is now exporting. With a booming social enterprise sector, a number of the world's leading academics, Nobel Prize winners and...

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Let's Test a Life-Saving Balloon

(3) Comments | Posted November 9, 2011 | 3:04 PM

In the minute or so it takes you to read these lines, 150 new babies will have been born across the globe. For many families, it will be one of the most special minutes of their lives. For many mothers, it's a moment of joy -- but it...

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WASH for Life: Testing Promising Solutions and Scaling Proven Successes in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene

Comments | Posted July 19, 2011 | 8:07 PM

In 2008, the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire brought the issue of unsafe sanitation to the silver screen. Audiences cringed as young Jamal is forced to jump into the open pit of feces in which he was previously seen relieving himself. But such scenes are not simply fodder for movie-goers and...

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USAID and ISC Celebrate Anniversaries with Ben and Jerry's!

(1) Comments | Posted June 24, 2011 | 5:10 PM

Fifty years ago, President John F. Kennedy called for the creation of an agency dedicated to international development. In a new postwar world, President Kennedy recognized that combating hunger, disease, and poverty around the globe would advance America's own values, prosperity and security - that agency is what we now...

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Global Engagement: An Approach for Mutual Respect and Mutual Interest

(1) Comments | Posted April 26, 2010 | 9:57 AM

Shamim, a proud woman in Pakistan vividly recalls when she received her very first order: A buyer requested several hundred pieces of the handicraft sample she had shown him. She quietly began to cry- tears of joy when tears of fear had dominated the previous six months. Her husband, a...

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