USAID announces the appointment of Saharah Moon Chapotin as the Bureau for Food Security’s third Deputy Assistant Administrator.
Saharah Moon brings an extensive background in international research, food security and agricultural development to this position. Most recently, she served as Acting Director of the Office of Agricultural Research and Policy in the Bureau for Food Security and served four years as the Division Chief for Research in BFS, where she helped lead the implementation of the Feed the Future Research Strategy and launched the Feed the Future Innovation Lab portfolio with U.S. universities.
Saharah Moon joined USAID in 2006 as a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow and subsequently served as a Biotechnology Advisor in the EGAT Bureau.
Prior to joining the agency, Saharah Moon worked at Iowa State University on biosafety policy issues and completed a fellowship at the National Academies working on scientific cooperation, communication and national security. Earlier in her career she conducted forest ecology and canopy biology research throughout the U.S. and in Madagascar and Costa Rica.
Saharah Moon holds a B.S. in Biology from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Plant Physiology from Harvard University. She has lived and worked in Madagascar and India and has extensive on-the-ground experience throughout South Asia and Africa.