Robert comes with more than 30 years for-profit and not-for-profit overseas experience leading change through institutional capacity building, community engaging initiatives and responding to humanitarian crisis. He has spent most of his time working in the field as a Country Director for numerous International and Non-government Organizations and in the private sector as a CEO of Financial Institutions where he spearheaded social responsibility and renewable energy lending programs. Robert has a reputation for groundbreaking, innovative programming in the world’s toughest environments and has transitioned relief and reconstruction activities to long-term sustainable development entities in a number of countries. As a consultant he developed and facilitated many workshops and provided technical assistance on emergency planning, food security, Micro-lending and Carbon reductions and has carried out surveys, program evaluations and authored a number of reports and studies. Robert has a highly successful track record at forming local partnerships and strategic alliances, building private, public and civic sector capacities and running multiple funded programming in complex emergencies. He has served in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Uganda, Lebanon and the Russian Federation and been on special missions to the Sudan, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ukraine, Chechnya, Belorussia, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau and Indonesia with the UN, International Organizations such as IOM and GTZ and various governments.
Robert grew-up in Montana, entered the US Peace Corps after graduating from Montana State University and thereafter, in 1977, he began his first job with refugees during the start-up of the Indochinese Refugee Boat Case Program in Malaysia. Since, he has served as the director of refugee and immigrant processing programs in Pakistan and Moscow and adult ESL and Cultural Orientation programs of Bataan Philippines, managed and supported refugee and IDP camps in Thailand and lead relief efforts while serving in the US as a director of refugee resettlement, community social services and adult and disability rehab programs for refugees and challenged populations.
