The students there are special. Most are highly motivated and have a handle on what they want for their careers. The students are mostly high school seniors who are taking training in a trade of their choice and are excited about graduating and moving on to a good job.

As a Deputy Chief of Party with the USAID funded and East-West Management Institute (EWMI) implemented Socio-Economic Development Activity in Azerbaijan (SEDA) Program, was responsible for the technical leadership and in-country management of SEDA’s activities, under the leadership of Chief of Party (COP); managed financial resources and program staff; managed partner coordination; maintained good working relationships with host government officials, stakeholders, and local partners; managed donor reporting; and ensured high-quality delivery of services. The responsibilities include, but not limited to: • Along with the COP oversee the activity development process, and provide direct management of the grants management, strengthening civil society and working with government units, ensuring coordination and communication with activity development staff in the regional offices and main office. • Manage and supervise the operations team consisting of finance, HR and logistics; • Develop, in collaboration with the Component Managers the annual operations work-plan for the program; • Oversee program development and implementation of national-level activities, and establish processes to connect program activities with the national strategy; • Oversee and supervise SEDA’s day-to-day operations; • Act as Program's liaison to local executive authorities, CSOs, other implementing partners, implementing units, and international donors and maintain strong and effective relationships with key stakeholders; • Assist COP in providing financial management oversight, analyze budgets, providing recommendations to headquarter on budget expenditures; • Ensure timely financial reporting by the Financial manager, ensure internal control and good practices are upheld, and monitor budget spending; • Travel to regional site offices and target regions as needed to provide technical assistance to SEDA’s regional offices; • Represent the program and deliver presentations on behalf of EWMI-SEDA; • Stay abreast and respectively inform COP and other SEDA staff about developments in socio-economic activities; • Ensure gender mainstreaming in SEDA’s assistance, information-sharing, and networking activities; • Ensure balanced participation of youth and ethnic minorities in all SEDA’s activities; • Provide management oversight of the M&E and research functions on the program, ensuring coordination and mutual support between Program and M&E team, and establishing feedback processes to ensure that activity lessons and research outcomes feed into and inform the activity design process; • Identify program opportunities and potential local partners; • In the temporary absence of the COP, act as the COP of the project, including acting as the primary point of contact for USAID (donor), government, and other counterparts; • Other duties and responsibilities as assigned.

As a Monitoring and Evaluation and Public Outreach Officer was responsible for ensuring an efficient implementation of SEDA's PMP, including annual reviews and potential improvements of the plan. The responsibilities included, but not limited to: • Providing training and hands-on technical assistance to SEDA staff on M&E tools and SEDA’s PMP; • Organizing SEDA’s public events and, including, but not limited to, identifying suitable event venues, drafting the scenario, developing the implementation plan, preparing banners and other visual materials, preparing press releases and press kits, inviting media, and ensuring that events comply with USAID guidelines on public events; • Ensuring that all SEDA-supported activities are well documented, including pictures, a list of participants, quotes from participants, and collecting media coverage of the event.

As a Capacity Development and Government Liaison Officer, I was responsible for SEDA’s capacity development activities targeting civil society organizations (CSOs) and governmental institutions. Here is the specific tasks: • Maintained SEDA’s relations with the government; • Ensured the successful implementation of SEDA’s training, mentoring, exchange visits, and Learning Circles activities; • Provided technical assistance to NGO Resource & Training Centers; • Provided feedback to grant applications by CSOs; • Supervised Government Capacity Development Needs Assessment; • Organized the Annual School on Participatory Development; • Organized exchange visits, training, and other technical assistance activities targeting government officials; • Collaborated with other international and governmental capacity development programs focused on civil society and expanding citizen participation in socio-economic development; • Assisted in Civic Engagement Grants program – particularly in playing a role of conduit between SEDA and NRTCs; • Organized the Annual School on Participatory Policy Development; • Organized national conference on best practices for citizen participation; • Facilitated ongoing support for legislative initiatives related to public participation; • Developed the scope of the work required to identify and facilitate the recruitment of experts and consultants; • Performed other tasks as needed.

I intend on going back I just took a break because I had focused on my Navy career for a while and I did not want my grades to slip