40 years of DAI

In the 1980s, after
rapid growth and
a string of veteran
departures, DAI
struggled to foster
good communication
between Washington
and the field.
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of a telex or fax line, pick up loose ends, and
direct callers and visitors to the right person in
DAI. Martha Rawasia, later known as Martha
Keller and Martha Fowler, was probably the
only person who could have handled her three
bosses so effortlessly while becoming a friend
and confidante of everyone who worked at DAI
or crossed its threshold as a visitor. She moved
out of town in 1985, and came back two years
later—after Barclay approached her on bended
knee—and remained with DAI for almost 20
more years after that.
With a more expansive view of the market, more
proposals to write, and more short-term consulting
teams to be staffed, DAI augmented its
recruiting capacity during the 1980s. A resilient
team, all of whom had lived in West Africa in recent
years, worked in the 9th Street office across
the hall from Max Goldensohn. Heidi Lowenthal
and Mary Jane Stickley became DAI institutions
in their own right, juggling always-urgent-doit-now
requests from Goldensohn with good
humor and an uncanny ability to find the right
people who could do the work “the DAI way.”
Lowenthal’s successor, Sherie Valderrama,
maintained this sharp focus on recruiting both
talent and character, oversaw the design and
installation of a computerized Recruitment Management
System, and eventually was honored
with the DAI Values Award in 1999.
As a new generation came in, some in the older
generation moved on. George Honadle, Elliott
Morss, and Jerry Silverman all departed in the
early 1980s, never having fully adjusted to what
Honadle called “the dictates of organized evolution
and survival.” At the end of the decade,
veterans Ken Koehn and David Gow also left.
A sad landmark of sorts was passed in 1988,
when Tom Stickley, who with wife Mary Jane
had served in West Africa, Haiti, and Indonesia,
died of a lung infection and hepatitis—the first
death in DAI’s extended family. Exotic illness
also tripped up Charlie Sweet, who came home
in 1982 from Tanzania under doctor’s orders,
due to a lingering foodborne virus he had
picked up in the field. Sweet’s health remained
shaky for years to come, and he never rejoined
DAI’s management team. He died in March
2009, at the age of 66.