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Director, Project Lifecycle Sarah Nugent

Sarah Nugent is a civil society and gender specialist with more than 20 years of professional experience in the Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia. Her expertise includes designing and delivering training workshops on gender equality mainstreaming, gender analysis, project and grant management, organizational capacity building, civic engagement, and accountability ecosystems. Since joining Chemonics in 1999, Sarah has served as a project management professional and grants manager for several projects in Egypt, Jordan, and the West Bank and Gaza, including service as the field-based director and grants manager for the West Bank and Gaza Civil Society and Democracy Strengthening project. She currently serves as the director of the Project Lifecycle Department in the Project Development and Support Division. Sarah holds an M.A. in international development studies from George Washington University and a B.A. in international studies and economics from American University.

by Sarah Nugent


Working the System: What We’ve Learned About Strengthening Accountability

When designing a new project, how often do we set out to strengthen a particular actor’s or institution’s ability to “hold government to account?” What does that mean exactly? Maybe the better question to ask is: what is the most effective way to strengthen accountability in our development work? And then, what does it look…

Government Accountability is More than a Simple Equation

Improving government accountability has been a goal of democracy programming in the development world for years. Practitioners of governance reform have tended to pursue increased accountability by focusing on two individual factors of the equation: transparency, by opening up government decision-making processes and increasing access to information; and participation, by increasing citizens’ voices through strengthened…