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Maura O'Neill
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Maura O’Neill is the Chief Innovation Officer and Senior Counselor to the Administrator at USAID where she has responsibility for inspiring and leading breakthroughs innovations in foreign assistance and development worldwide. In addition, she co-led USAID Forward, the Agency's major reform initiative as well as created ground-breaking public-private partnerships in supply chain sourcing, mobile money, gender equity, entrepreneurship and new models for sourcing and scaling development interventions. She serves on the White House Innovation Cohort assisting the Administration in innovation across federal government. Maura through her work in the public, private and academic sectors, she has created entrepreneurial and public policy solutions for some of the toughest domestic and global problems. Before coming to USAID, she authored President Obama's Biofuels Strategy while at U.S. Department of Agriculture, and as Chief of Staff for Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) tackled the 2008 financial crisis, oil price explosion and renewal of clean energy tax credits. O’Neill has started four companies in the fields of electricity efficiency, customer info systems and billing, e-commerce and digital education. In 1989, she was named the Greater Seattle Business Person of the Year. O’Neill has master's degrees in business administration from Columbia University and the University of California at Berkeley, and currently serves on the faculty of the latter's Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. She earned her PhD at the University of Washington, where her research focused on narrow-mindedness and the errors it leads to in science, medicine, business and political decision making.

Blog Entries by Maura O'Neill

Alabanza a Doña Becky: A Tribute to Rebecca Tarbotton

(1) Comments | Posted January 28, 2013 | 11:05 AM

As I traveled from D.C. to the West Coast listening to a song from one of my favorite Broadway musicals, In the Heights, I couldn't stop thinking about Rebecca Tarbotton. An environmental activist and executive director of The Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Becky was one of the most courageous, inspirational,...

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Disruptive Innovation Often Comes From Unexpected Places

(26) Comments | Posted January 25, 2013 | 9:00 AM

Click here to read an original op-ed from the TED speaker who inspired this post and watch the TEDTalk below.

As a mathematician, Max Little hasn't spent most of his career in a doctor's office or a hospital, but with a pad and pencil or behind...

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Coding for Hunger: Not Development as Usual

(0) Comments | Posted January 4, 2013 | 6:12 PM

Barbara's mother was desperate -- there was nothing in the house to feed her children or herself. All that remained was a bag of seed that she'd been planning to sow on her small plot of land. Could the seeds be eaten as food? She could no longer look at...

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The Next Mobile Revolution: Boosting Women's Entrepreneurship Via Mobile Money

(6) Comments | Posted December 18, 2012 | 7:25 AM

For Marion, the challenge of starting her own business was not lack of initiative - she had plenty - but rather dearth of start-up capital. At 20 years old, Marion dropped out of school because she didn't have sufficient school fees. In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where she lives, this...

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Hacking for Hunger? There's An App for That!

(2) Comments | Posted October 16, 2012 | 2:02 PM

One of the most beloved companies to be birthed in Seattle was Home Grocer. You ordered groceries on the internet and a great delivery person arrived, leaving them on your kitchen counter. The produce was beautiful and nutritious. Sadly after trying to expand too quickly in the first dot com...

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Having It All Starts With Defining 'ALL'

(3) Comments | Posted June 25, 2012 | 4:29 PM

I worked with Anne-Marie Slaughter when she was at the State Department. She has since written a very thought-provoking and deeply personal piece on whether women can have it all. We got to wake up with her at 4:20 a.m. on Monday to catch the train to DC...

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The Hunt for Impact Investments

(1) Comments | Posted April 30, 2012 | 1:00 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

(0) Comments | Posted December 20, 2011 | 5:11 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 | 4:04 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

(0) Comments | Posted July 19, 2011 | 9:07 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 | 6:10 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 | 10:57 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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