When the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) attacked USAID, they perhaps thought the thousands of development and humanitarian professionals would wither away. But that’s not who we are. We were trained that when you see a disaster, you run toward it, not away. You help people in need, not just in the short term, but as they rebuild. So when USAID missions went dark, our work did not. When the attacks on USAID began in January 2025 with dedicated public servants being locked out of their computers and stop-work orders halting all USAID assistance, the development community mobilized. As a former USAID Foreign Service officer and acting assistant administrator of the bureau that oversaw USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), I realized right away that we were trying to respond to a disaster without an “ops center,” like USAID once had and State still does, that serves as the nerve center critical to coordinating a response. In the following days, four USAID Foreign Service officers— Ambassador Erin McKee, Alicia Dinerstein, Jeanne Briggs, and I—mobilized donations for Stand Up for AID and established the Aid Transition Alliance (AidTA). We named our small volunteer team “Point Four”—a nod to history for those who knew that President Harry Truman’s Point Four initiative was the precursor to USAID and that the Administrator’s conference When DOGE struck in January 2025, USAID officers mobilized, providing peer support, challenging misinformation, and rescuing the agency’s knowledge infrastructure for the future. BY SUSAN REICHLE Susan Reichle is a retired USAID Foreign Service officer and former president and CEO of the International Youth Foundation, co-founder of the Aid Transition Alliance (AidTA), chair of the board of the Coalition of Racial and Ethnic Equity in Development (CREED), and member of the American Academy of Diplomacy, National Security Leaders for America, and the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network. THE AID TRANSITION ALLIANCE RUNNING TOWARD A DISASTER 20 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2026 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL FOCUS A WORLD WITHOUT
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