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Michael Mahdesian
Urban Planning '81 |
As deputy director of the Bureau of Humanitarian Response, part of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Mahdesian is charged with shaping assistance programs and delivering relief to countries overtaken by disaster -- usually of the man-made variety.
In that role, Mahdesian is called upon to do everything from deliver disaster relief supplies and services to develop plans for rebuilding a shattered civil society, always in a complex environment that requires coordination with scores of federal, United Nations, and non-governmental agencies.
It is a job in which the Los Angeles native often calls on the training he received as a master's student in urban planning, he said. "Many of the things I was doing in urban planning, writing or thinking about, I am practicing here," said Mahdesian, who recently returned from Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland and Guatemala.
"There is a real set of skills that is applicable to helping local and regional governments work with grassroots groups of all stripes and with larger groups like the United Nations to help develop a country from the bottom up, not just from capital cities," he said. "I feel like I've come full circle."
While a student at UCLA, Mahdesian worked closely with Emeritus Prof. John Friedman and Prof. Ed Soja, focusing on regional and international development issues. "I had a wonderful two years," he said.
Initially a political activist who worked in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., Mahdesian had returned to Los Angeles and was running an aerospace maintenance supply firm when a devastating earthquake struck Armenia in 1988. Several groups formed the United Armenian Fund to provide aid, and Mahdesian was recruited to run the relief effort.
He loved the experience, and when the new Clinton administration approached him in 1992, he quickly signed on with USAID.
Mahdesian oversees the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and the new Office of Transition Initiatives, which was created to help countries emerging from internal conflict to rebuild civil society, support the fragile peace process, and map out political and economic development priorities.
He was deeply involved in efforts to rebuild Bosnia after the Dayton Accords were signed, serving as USAID's coordinator of humanitarian and transition programs for Bosnia. He led the first USAID assessment team into the new Democratic Republic of the Congo last year, and played a key role in helping shape the U.S. assistance program there.
"That means I really get involved in the inter-agency process, working with the State Department, the Defense Department, the National Security Council, international NGOs, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, as well as local NGOs and other groups," he said.
It's richly rewarding work, Mahdesian said. "Beyond being intellectually challenging -- particularly our work on post-conflict nation- building -- our efforts have an immediate impact on the people we are working with and on U.S. policy," he said. "That combination is a very heady one."