Donna Vincent Roa, PhD, ABC, CDPM® the Project Director for USAID’s Partnerships Incubator is the guest on this episode of The Next Word with host Christine Warnke. Learn about this renaissance woman and how she aligns an organization and position them to receive funds from USAID. Donna’s current project is the Water Sustainability Program that started in October 2019, where she had to learn water tech in a 12 month lesson. The ultimate goal is to connect organizations to a free echo system with other interested partners to help them understand their readiness and then connect to other resources and, improve knowledge of what it take to work as a contractor or subcontractor with USAID.
Project Director | USAID’s Partnerships Incubator
Watch this episode of The Next Word to discover how Donna Vincent Roa aligns an organization and positions them to receive funds from USAID.
Through research of CEO’s who have major impact on water, the Partnerships Incubator was born. The New Partnerships Initiative (NPI) was the linchpin for development. The objective is to work with an agency to elevate local leadership, diversify partner base, help the agency to embed creativity and innovation, and what incubators help partners connect to the agency. This improves the readiness to work with USAID and brings more partners to the equation. There are different ways to break in and work with USAID. Soon WorkWithUSAID.org will be a good place to start for those new to USAID since navigating USAID.gov is complicated if you don’t know where to start.
Donna put together a pre-engagement assessment of 48 questions that help align with the requirements of the agency for those organizations interested. Answers reveal a list of items of action to improve readiness to work with the agency. We hear about Donna’s other accomplishments that include an array of fun, impressive, challenges she continues to strive and achieve. To start, she’s an author of multiple books (The Value of Water and Five Knocks), a filmmaker, a singer with Harbour City Music Company Show Chorus, a Stevie Award Recipient, a Research Scientist that redesigned the $100 bill when it had a significant change years ago amongst other accomplishments and counting.
Harbor City Music Company Show Chorus (Donna is pictured in the top center, the only one with a hat on)
For more information visit USAID.gov or WorkWithUSAID.org. Watch this episode of The Next Word below or on MMC’s YouTube channel and subscribe!
