Andrew Natsios

Former USAID Administrator

Andrew S. Natsios served as Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the lead US government agency for international economic development and humanitarian assistance, from 2001 until 2006. During this period, Mr. Natsios managed the agency’s reconstruction programs in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan, which totaled more than $14 billion over four years. In 2006, President Bush appointed him Special Coordinator for International Disaster Assistance and Special Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sudan. As President Bush’s Special Envoy to Sudan between September 2006 and Dec. 2007, he dealt with the crisis in Darfur and the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the North and the South Sudan.

Mr. Natsios served previously at USAID, first as director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance from 1989 to 1991 and then as assistant administrator for the Bureau for Food and Humanitarian Assistance (now the Bureau of Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance) from 1991 to January 1993.

From April 2000 to March 2001, Mr. Natsios served as the CEO of Boston’s “Big Dig,” the largest construction project in American history, while he was Chairman of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority. He assumed leadership of the project after $2.4 billion in undisclosed cost overruns were discovered. Before that, he served at the chief financial and administrative officer of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as Secretary for Administration and Finance from March 1999 to April 2000.

From 1993 to 1998, Mr. Natsios was vice president of World Vision U.S., the largest faith-based non-governmental organization in the world with programs in 103 countries. From 1987 to 1989, he was executive director of the Northeast Public Power Association in Milford, Massachusetts. Mr. Natsios served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1975 to 1987 and was named legislator of the year by the Massachusetts Municipal Association (1978), the Massachusetts Association of School Committees (1986), and Citizens for Limited Taxation (1986). He also was chairman of the Massachusetts Republican State Committee for seven years. 

After serving 23 years in the U.S. Army Reserves as a civil affairs officer, Mr. Natsios retired in 1995 with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He is a veteran of the Gulf War.

Mr. Natsios has served on the faculty of the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University since 2006. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, where he received a master’s degree in public administration.