An Incredible 51 Years of Service at USAID
Agency celebrates longtime employee’s service with a social distancing-appropriate retirement send-off
Jeffrey Evans began his USAID career before email, before telework, and before many of his colleagues in his last post in the Bureau for Global Health were born.
He ended it in March after 51 years with a final visit to Agency headquarters in Washington to celebrate his achievements — and to take home the requisite certificate of appreciation — alongside his wife, then-Administrator Mark Green, and a bare-bones staff in the executive office. His original retirement party had to be cancelled when the Agency instituted telework for most all employees due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
That Jeff spent over 51 years at USAID — 18,769 consecutive days by his count — is a remarkable accomplishment. The average length of service for federal government workers is about 27 years.
While he ended his USAID tenure in the Bureau for Global Health, providing guidance to colleagues on requirements for justifying and getting approval for projects, Jeff started his career in Vietnam. From there, he moved around Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe, finding himself on the frontlines of some of the world’s biggest developments.
He’s watched email replace cables and scratchy phone calls and mission staffs grow in size and expertise — “When I arrived (in Sri Lanka) our whole mission staffing could fit in a station wagon!” he says.
“Overall, it has been a great adventure,” Jeff said by email. “Serving my country in Vietnam in a way that was helpful to people, seeing the last vestige of the British Empire in Sri Lanka, having gone from being a little kid in the Bronx to sitting in Moscow at the Bolshoi ballet (and being there when a coup was attempted), and learning from my wife about life before the Soviet Union’s collapse, all while helping to raise six children.”
In addition to making life-long friends, Jeff has seen the impact USAID’s work has had in developing countries over the decades. Even when the focus of USAID’s assistance changed from administration to administration, Jeff says, the important work of he and his colleagues continued to make a positive impact.
In an email to colleagues aptly titled “I’m finishing my journey to self-reliance,” a play on the Agency’s current strategy to accomplish its mission, Jeff lauded the work of his colleagues, especially those in Global Health, or GH.
“I want to tell you that while I have worked with first-class development experts around the world, the folks in GH are the greatest concentration of hard working experts in their field that I have met,” he said. “I’ve thought to myself these people are brilliant and really know what is needed and how to achieve success.”
That expertise will be put into play with the Agency’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jeff, now at home with his wife and two of his college-age children, will watch from the sidelines. Or will he? There’s a possibility, he says, he might pitch in for the next few months. That sounds about right.
