Patricia Taft Nasri is Chief of Party for Democracy International’s (DI) USAID-funded Tunisia Civil Society Activity. She is a senior level international development specialist with over two decades of expertise in civil society empowerment, gender and youth engagement, early warning and response, conflict prevention, and democracy and governance programming. From 2020 through 2022, she served as the Acting Executive Director and Vice President of Policy and Programs at The Fund for Peace (FFP), a 75-year old Washington, DC international foreign policy and sustainable development NGO. Prior to this, she served as a Programs Officer at FFP for over a decade, and has held senior positions at the US Institute of Peace (USIP) and the Public International Law and Policy Group (PILPG). Over the course of her career, she has successfully designed, implemented, and evaluated multimillion dollar international assistance contracts, cooperative agreements, and grants from the US and foreign governments, multinational development banks, philanthropic institutions, and the private sector on projects ranging from community-level conflict prevention to measuring local level resilience and adaptations to climate change. Ms. Taft Nasri has over 15 years of management and implementation experience at HQ and field levels, with combined programming experience in over 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America.

An experienced public speaker, moderator, and lecturer, she has presented at such forums as the United Nations; NATO; the African Union; Economic Community of West African States; the National Endowment for Democracy; the Asian, African, and Islamic Development Banks; and major annual IFC/World Bank events. She has frequently contributed commentary to Al Jazeera, BBC World, BBC Africa, National Public Radio, France 24, and others. Ms. Taft Nasri also has prior field experience as Chief of Party for major, USAID transitional justice program in Uganda and executive level experience in nonprofit leadership and organizational management and growth. She has authored over 50 published articles and opinion pieces, and is co-author and editor of two published books on international peacekeeping and stabilization operations from Georgetown University Press, and the prevention of violent extremism in Nigeria from Spring Press. She has a Master’s degree in International Peace and Conflict Resolution from American University, with a specialization in International Law. She graduated summa cum laude with a degree in comparative Russian and American history from Temple University, and is a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Ms. Taft Nasri has lived with her family in Tunisia since 2016, speaks Spanish, and has basic proficiency in French and Maghrebi Arabic.