Alexis Bonnell is the Division Chief of Applied Innovation and Acceleration in the U.S. Global Development Lab of USAID. Over her career, Alexis has developed and delivered over a billion dollar of humanitarian and development programming in over 25 conflict, post-conflict, and emergency countries, in almost every sector from education to stabilization, for more than 30 International Bi-lateral donors, 10 UN agencies, the military, and private sector. She has held positions with every side of development including: implementers, donors, policy makers, and beneficiaries and is proud of her “360 degrees” of development experience. Her more than 20 years of experience in management and communications has provided her incredible opportunities to work on/with: Wall Street, “Dot.coms”, Middle East Peace Plan, Afghan and Iraq Elections, Global emergency response coordination and major logistics operations.
Her focus at the Lab is to help convene and connect people and organizations around the world with the most innovative applications of science, technology, innovation, and partnership to accelerate the end to extreme poverty. Alexis is leading the team around the new Global Innovation Exchange, a industry level platform to share all globally relevant development innovation.