Benjamin Feit has nearly 20 years of experience in the design, implementation and management of international development projects worldwide. Since 1993, he has implemented governance projects throughout Africa and Central and Eastern Europe, gaining hands-on experience in decentralization, municipal finance, capacity building of local government, social infrastructure planning and delivery, legislative strengthening, and citizen participation. In South Africa he managed and oversaw implementation in four provinces of a nationwide education and health infrastructure delivery program that strengthened the capacity of provincial governments in all aspects of the planning, budgeting and management process. He also conducted a multi-country comparative study on southern African management development institutes and their ability to build public sector capacity and improve performance and service delivery. In Romania, Mr. Feit was the Deputy Chief of Party for a $45 million governance reform project, where he oversaw more than 70 staff persons and four field offices. He was instrumental in developing and using several tools such as the Local Government Capacity Index, which measured local governments’ capacity in areas such as participatory budgeting, capital improvement planning, and procurement transparency. The project was also one of the earliest examples of using community scorecards to enable citizens to monitor effectiveness of local public services. Apart from directly implementing governance projects, Mr. Feit was USAID’s Democracy and Governance Advisor in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. There he worked at the policy and strategic level, designing and overseeing a $7 million annual democracy-building program portfolio, including a large civil society building program.

Mr. Feit currently serves a dual role as Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service Masters Program, where he teaches courses in governance and institutional capacity building, as well as program and project design for development management practitioners.