Leadership
 

Founder: Mrs. Krista Desgranges Elkhamri is a proven leader in conflict prevention, peacebuilding, and countering violent extremism (CVE), with over 25 years of international development experience in non-permissive environments across Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. With a demonstrated mastery in CVE, conflict resolution and prevention, resilience, economic growth, governance, and education, she has designed, led, and managed large and complex CVE, stabilization, and humanitarian assistance programs, including the $20M USAID/Côte d’Ivoire Resilience for Peace program, the $38M USAID/Benin Northern Economic Livelihood Program, and the $15M USAID/Niger Participatory Responsive Governance. She has also led major humanitarian response efforts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and post-earthquake Haiti. Krista has worked with USAID, the U.S. Department of State, and numerous NGOs and think tanks to design and implement innovative approaches that integrate humanitarian assistance, conflict prevention, and long-term development. She is recognized for strengthening youth economic livelihoods in high-risk areas, bolstering community resilience, and reducing vulnerability to radicalization, while effectively guiding cross-functional teams and influencing policy. Drawing on extensive field and research experience on violent extremism dynamics, she brings lessons learned from the Sahel, Coastal West Africa, and Syria to apply complexity-aware monitoring, evaluation, and learning, as well as flexible, adaptive management. She has deep experience in analysis-driven and innovative programming, including through her collaborations with USAID/OTI in Uganda, Haiti, Côte d’Ivoire, Niger, and Benin. Her work emphasizes locally led, conflict-sensitive solutions, including the design of a $30M local award in Syria for the White Helmets, which expanded critical emergency and essential services during protracted crises and post-earthquake recovery. Krista excels in communication, partnership development, and coordination with host-country institutions, private-sector partners, donors, and local organizations. Her cultural fluency—shaped by decades of living and working across Sub-Saharan Africa—allows her to tailor effective, context-specific CVE and resilience programming.  Her field experience includes assignments in Syria, Côte d'Ivoire, Benin, Niger, Senegal, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and Rwanda. She holds a B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University and an M.A. in Conflict Resolution from American University. She is fluent in English and French, proficient in Spanish, and has beginner-level Arabic.