Jessie Evans - Defense Security Cooperation University

Faculty

Regional Advising

Ms. Jessie Evans joined the Institute for Security Governance (ISG) in December 2018 as an Africa Regional Program Lead (RPL) within the Regional Advising Division. In this role, Ms. Evans manages Institutional Capacity Building (ICB) projects in the AFRICOM area of responsibility, working directly with defense and security partners across sub-Saharan Africa.

Prior to joining ISG, Ms. Evans worked for the Department of State (DOS) in a range of political-military affairs positions, including Security Sector Reform Advisor to the US Mission to Somalia based in Somalia and Kenya, and as a Senior Conflict Specialist living overseas in Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Bangladesh. Prior to her time at the State Department, Ms. Evans worked at the Harvard School of Public Health on international health and human rights. She also spent time early in her career at the Pentagon and the United Nations working on Africa regional issues.

In her role as a security sector reform advisor to the US Mission to Somalia, Ms. Evans pushed for tough adjustments on US security assistance and as a result, the US Ambassador adjusted millions of dollars of assistance to address issues of waste, corruption, and poor alignment to policy goals. Ms. Evans spent countless hours with Somali defense officials, anti-corruption activists, and the US military to re-calibrate assistance and determine what benchmarks should be used to measure impact. In Afghanistan, she worked with military generals, ambassadors, and members of Congress to empower Afghan women in the security services to advance peace and security in their homeland, and created an interagency system to evaluate progress against joint US-Afghanistan policy goals. In Burma, Ms. Evans engaged the Myanmar Army, ethnic armed groups, and civil society in remote regions of Myanmar with little US presence to identify shared priorities. She also designed and drafted three electoral security risk assessments for the 2015 parliamentary elections in Myanmar, providing recommendations to senior US and Myanmar officials for action. In Bangladesh, Ms. Evans led a conflict prevention team and used US diplomatic engagement and programming to help Bangladeshi leaders work together to find alternatives to violent political opposition.

Ms. Evans is an advisor to the Women in International Security's DC (WIIS-DC) Chapter Board and an active member of the Truman National Security Project and Rotary International. She received a Master of Arts from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a Bachelor of Arts from Occidental College. She originally hails from beautiful Bend, Oregon.