When USAID was dissolved, Sasha Gallant didn't let the work she'd spent years building disappear with it. As the former head of Development Innovation Ventures (DIV), USAID's evidence-driven innovation fund, Gallant watched stop-work orders freeze over 100 active awards overnight. Rather than let that portfolio die, she did two things:
Helped mobilize more than $130 million to keep the most critical, life-saving USAID projects alive through an initiative called Project Resource Optimization, and
Co-founded DIV as an independent nonprofit–the DIV Fund–to test and scale new, potentially cost-effective global development innovations.
In this conversation with co-hosts Jonathan Jackson and Amie Vaccaro, Gallant unpacks why innovation funding in global development is chronically underfunded, how DIV evaluates ideas on evidence, cost-effectiveness, and potential for scale, and why the biggest wins are often "supremely unshiny": pedagogical tweaks, cheaper CPAP machines, smarter delivery models. She also grapples with a strange moment of dissonance: surviving deep funding cuts just as a new wave of AI-driven wealth approaches the sector. As she puts it, believing we've already found our best solutions is "basically giving up on human progress." For funders, innovators, and development leaders navigating a rapidly changing funding landscape, this episode offers thoughtful guidance on building a future where every dollar creates greater impact.
Related Resources:
DIV Fund – The independent nonprofit Sasha Gallant co-founded, continuing USAID's Development Innovation Ventures model of tiered, evidence-driven innovation grants.
Project Resource Optimization (PRO) – The initiative (hosted by the Center for Global Development) that Gallant helped launch to triage and match donors to the most cost-effective USAID programs left without funding.
GiveWell – The charity evaluator referenced for its rigorously vetted "best buy" list of cost-effective global health and development programs.
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Hosts: Jonathan Jackson and Amie Vaccaro
