Dara Katz is the Deputy of USAID’s interim Secretariat on Countering Violent Extremism and the co-chair of USAID’s Violent Extremism and Insurgency Steering Committee. Previously, Ms. Katz has served as a senior advisor on democracy, governance, peace and security issues for the Middle East Bureau since 2011. Ms. Katz has advised and designed programming across the Middle East, including Libya, Syria, Egypt and Jordan, and expanded the peace and security portfolio. Prior her work on the Middle East, Ms. Katz spent more than a decade in conflict and post-conflict zones focused on human rights, electoral administration and conflict mitigation. In Afghanistan, Ms. Katz served with three UN organizations, and headed the human rights team in the northeastern provinces and authored a key report on arbitrary detention practices. At the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Mission in Kosovo, Ms. Katz was a senior human rights advisor, heading the Property Rights Unit.  Ms. Katz also has served on election administration bodies in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo. She holds a BA with Honors from Wesleyan University and a LLM with Distinction in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex.