Introducing Humans of Development: Sam Alhadeff
Showcasing the real people and measurable impact made through foreign assistance investments
What is one misconception your family had about your work?
I am Sam Alhadeff. I’ve been very fortunate to have friends and family who understand why my work matters and have supported me throughout.
The biggest challenge, honestly, was explaining what my team at USAID actually did. So I started saying, “You know the TV show Shark Tank? Yeah, my team is like that—but for helping people around the world.”
That usually did the trick.
We funded innovations across the countries where USAID works—solutions that could improve lives better, cheaper, or faster than the status quo. I could always go into more detail, but nothing was ever quite as punchy as that line.
What is one innovation you’ve funded that really stuck with you, and why?
Every innovator I worked with was remarkable, and I would love to fill this column with their stories.
I’ll stick to one project that stands out as a perfect example of why my time with USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) was so valuable and special: supporting teachers to integrate agricultural education into science and math curricula in Liberia.
It was one of the first projects I managed after joining the team, and it immediately showed me the kind of impact our work could have. In addition to teaching the science behind agricultural best practices, the program included school gardens, leadership training, and other hands-on resources for students.
The theory of change, like with many of DIV’s most effective innovations, was clear: If you make schoolwork more relevant to students’ lives, then they’ll see the relevance, engage more deeply, and carry those lessons home.
That relevance didn’t just increase attendance and learning—it helped parents see the value of education and created a ripple effect, spreading improved agricultural practices to families and entire communities.
In a country where agricultural extension services are scarce, this kind of win-win—better education and better agricultural production—was both inspiring and backed by rigorous research, partially funded by our team. It’s the kind of story that reminds you exactly why this work matters.
How do you stay grounded in the human impact behind the numbers?
At DIV, putting humans first was always at the heart of our work. When evaluating an applicant, one of the most important questions we asked was: Does this innovation make a measurable, meaningful difference in people’s lives? It wasn’t enough to shift a global metric or nudge a population-level trend—the impact had to be real, tangible, and personal.
One example I always come back to is a grantee that developed a low-cost version of a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) machine, called a bubble CPAP, that doesn’t require electricity. It was designed to deliver life-saving oxygen to premature babies in low-resource settings.
Within months of receiving our funding, the device saved two newborns’ lives in a hospital in Ghana that wouldn’t have had access to this kind of equipment otherwise.I think about that constantly.
What inspired you to work in international development?
Since high school, I have been obsessed with the potential for public policy and politics to make real, wide-sweeping changes to improve people’s lives, both in the United States and abroad, and knew that is what I wanted to do for work.
After a lot of internships (seriously, too many), I learned that many policy-oriented careers like political campaigns, think tanks, or even entry-level roles in Congress meant I would be many steps removed from my work directly helping people, which is my guiding light.
In international development—and especially on my team at USAID—the decisions I made each day and the work I did to ensure high-impact organizations received the funding they needed to grow directly contributed to improving people’s lives.
What is one thing you could change about how global development works?
Maybe not super surprising, but I would love it if global development closely reflected my team at USAID’s work, with a rigorous focus on finding and generating evidence for what really works and improves people’s lives and scaling that to reach millions of people.
There are incredible projects in global development that don’t—and shouldn’t—require rigorous evidence of impact, like humanitarian aid or providing basic necessities to people living in extreme poverty, but I’d love to see more decision-makers in the field willing to acknowledge when something isn’t working and actively seek out alternatives that do.
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