Erika Drazen

Erika works for USAID as the Accountability Mechanism Officer. Erika is formerly a Program Officer, Safeguards at the World Wildlife Fund, where she ensured that WWF's GEF and GCF projects comply with environmental and social safeguards. Erika graduated from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and the Yale School of Management in 2017. During the summer of 2016, she worked in the Environment and Natural Resources Practice at Chemonics helping the organization form technical expertise on climate change, as well as determining ways to effectively help the practices engage with project administration (mostly of USAID contracts).  During the summer of 2015, she examined the factors that enable successful upscaling of GEF Small Grants Programme projects, as well as researched women's inclusion in REDD readiness in Sri Lanka. At Yale, she worked with The Forests Dialogue to plan and execute multi-stakeholder dialogues to build consensus around forest-related issues. Additionally, she was a research assistant on a Hewlett Foundation study examining evidence-informed policy and implementation in the international development field.  She has also worked in the environmental nonprofit sector in India, Sri Lanka, Israel, Australia, Panama and the United States. She received her B.A. in Anthropology with minors in Art History and Geography & Environmental Studies from UCLA.