40 years of DAI

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Ownership, however, could be figurative as well as financial. As Marcotte had learned, continued growth made the tough job of integrating employees from many sectors, cultures, and geographic locations that much tougher, but the company invested in that, as well. The workforce had changed greatly in recent years. By the 2000s, almost every DAI project team included more foreign nationals than U.S. citizens. The intake of new, younger employees was also changing. Once, DAI employees had started out in the Peace Corps or in NGO work and completed a graduate degree before seeking career employment. Increasingly, however, some of DAI’s best talent was joining soon after college, starting virtually from the ground up and pressing for opportunities to get out to the field where the “real work” was being done. These younger employees tended to cycle out of the company after a few years, often seeking more education, but DAI tried to lure the best of them back. “We have to put DAI deep enough into their aspirations,” explained Bruce Spake. To reinforce its sense of community, DAI adopted a new visual identity in the middle of the decade. Management also took steps to bring people back together—literally—when it invested in a handsome new office in Bethesda. DAI had long since outgrown the two-story building on Woodmont Avenue and had been forced to disperse staff among several locations, including two satellite offices downtown. In the spring of 2006, DAI leased five floors at 7600 Wisconsin Avenue, half a mile away. The interior featured natural materials such as bamboo and cork, and color schemes on each floor reflected the shades of the new DAI flag. The new quarters featured a “finger painting room” and a profusion of meeting spaces to foster informal creativity and brainstorming, which proved to be an instant hit for proposal teams and task forces working on complex topics. By October, all 300 home office staff were comfortably settled in their new home. To accommodate its continued growth, DAI moved to a larger office at 7600 Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda—just a few blocks away from its old headquarters. 89
In 2006, DAI hosted a party for the Global Development Alliance (GDA). DAI Senior Vice President for Project Management Rob Dressen stands at left. Among many other things, GDA worked with DAI and others on HIV/AIDS issues. 90 A Changing Landscape For the first half of DAI’s history, the landscape of U.S. foreign aid remained a familiar one. USAID had its changing priorities, but almost alone it had been the chief provider of U.S. foreign assistance. That changed in the latter part of DAI’s history, as the military, the State Department, and newly created agencies took more prominent roles in overseas development. One of these new agencies was the Millennium Challenge Corporation, established by Congress in 2004 to disburse funds to countries that seemed to have high potential for successful economic development. Another was the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR), intended to combat HIV/AIDS, primarily in Africa. USAID was itself changing dramatically. At the outset of the Bush administration, the agency formulated its own response to growing calls to bring free-market forces into play in the realm of foreign aid. One result was the Global Development Alliance (GDA), created in 2001 to facilitate public-private cooperative efforts. Such efforts started by identifying development opportunities and assigning seed money. GDA then enlisted corporate and other private sector partners to pursue collaborative solutions. In 2006, DAI won an IQC to provide a broad range of implementation services for GDA. Led by Kristi Ragan, the GDA team established a presence at both GDA’s offices in Washington and DAI’s headquarters in Bethesda. Among the team’s tasks were to involve the Mars Corporation in Haitian hillside farming, help Unocal and ConocoPhillips fund tsunami relief in Indonesia, and coordinate efforts by the Government of Lesotho and major U.S. clothing retailers to fight HIV/AIDS in that country’s garment industry. By mid-2009, DAI had leveraged $3 million in program funds into $17 million in public-private partnerships. This shifting landscape of development meant tougher going for contractors. As the cost of competing for and administering contracts steadily increased, start-ups faced ever higher barriers to entry, and even many older, more established firms were regularly relegated to subcontractor status. Just a few big contractors, DAI among them, tended to take the lead in prime contracting. With industry leadership, however, came new hazards, including the chance that in the absence of a compelling DAI
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2 DAI, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA www.
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FOreWOrd There are three reasons we
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chapter One Something to believe In
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Chapter One Something to Believe In
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Development By 1979, the notion tha
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It was Charles Franklin “Charlie
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law in Delaware, where many small c
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ects in Africa. Hatch held a newly
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Most staff members who joined DAI i
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tise, energy, and especially money.
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Barclay encountered Charlie Sweet,
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after Barclay. In early 1978, he be
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norm after this. The offering docum
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gathered in the well-appointed surr
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Chapter Two Learning by Doing, 1981
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spending, and demand in the technic
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several senior managers, including
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Back on the Growth Path Don Mickelw
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second was that the firm was ready
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spurs and become assets in the firm
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A Different Direction By 1981, soon
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in rural enterprise development and
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Page 54 and 55: Chapter Three The Fresh Faces of De
Page 56 and 57: household word. USAID had commissio
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Page 70 and 71: Transition These successes and fail
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Page 74 and 75: Chapter Four Farther and Faster, 20
Page 76 and 77: Barclay could not have known then t
Page 78 and 79: Tactical deployment of grants was t
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Page 84 and 85: highly successful. Said Abu Hijleh,
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Page 90 and 91: Transformation and Transition The e
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Page 94 and 95: Chapter Five Pulling Together, 2005
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Page 100 and 101: advantage, USAID would favor a comp
Page 102 and 103: As Jim Boomgard noted, “Developme
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Page 106 and 107: In his role as COO, empowered by Ba
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Page 110 and 111: the mid-1990s, DAI had begun to ext
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Page 117: DAI Advancing Human Prosperity
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40 years of DAI

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