Sarah Baran

Sarah is dedicated to working on humanitarian policy reform after spending the last six years leading teams in humanitarian responses in the Horn of Africa and South Asia. Most recently, she worked with the United Nations Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to support efforts to improve accountability to crisis-affected populations with the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Secretariat, the longest-standing and highest-level humanitarian coordination forum, comprised of executive heads of 18 UN and Non-UN organizations. Sarah spent the year prior to joining MIP leading a team of over 200 people to provide emergency services in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh with Solidarites International. She also directed a $50 million Consortium of nine non-governmental organizations with Norwegian Refugee Council to respond to the threat of famine in Somalia. Prior to humanitarian work, Sarah began her career with Georgetown University, her alma mater, implementing randomized control trials in Kenya and working alongside East African governments to translate the results into development policy. She also helped open Georgetown University’s Initiative on Innovation, Development, and Evaluation (gui2de) East African office, expanding operations to Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda. Sarah is pursuing the MIP through the generous support of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program. Now that she's in the bay area, she's excited to spend as much time as possible in the mountains.