Courtney Blake

Courtney Blake is a former Senior Humanitarian Advisor for USAID. Over more than 13 years with the agency, she led humanitarian response and crisis operations, directed program and organizational oversight and evaluation for large-scale assistance portfolios, and served in key advisory positions for senior officials across some of the world's most complex environments, including Afghanistan, Gaza, Syria, and Yemen.

She most recently served in Geneva, where she led U.S. engagement with major international organizations, including the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, working across multilateral bodies to strengthen coordination and program delivery. Earlier in her USAID career, she spearheaded the agency's response to the West Africa Ebola outbreak and built its Protection, Gender and Disability Team from the ground up, establishing systems and standards still used across the agency's humanitarian programming.

Prior to USAID, she served as Emergency Coordinator with UNFPA in South Sudan and held program management roles with the IRC in Liberia, South Sudan, and New York. Her career spans the U.S. government, the UN system, and leading NGOs, giving her a rare vantage point on how multilateral and bilateral actors coordinate, deliver, and are held accountable for results. She brings deep expertise in humanitarian assistance, multilateral affairs, and organizational and program oversight, with a track record of delivering results when the stakes are highest.