Kaitlin Shilling

Kaitlin Shilling has spent most of her career working in the non-governmental sector, and specifically in post-crisis development, which she is now studying in more depth at Stanford University. Just prior to returning to the ivory tower, Ms. Shilling spent over a year and a half working for DAI, a development consulting company, on two USAID-funded projects in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.  She began as the Director of Finance and Operations for the Afghanistan Immediate Needs Project, and then moved to the Alternative Livelihoods Project to run the Gender and Micro-Enterprise Department.  Her work on both of these projects involved collaborating with other NGOs, donors, and UN agencies working in the region.

Before moving to Afghanistan, Ms. Shilling worked in the home office of DAI for almost two years in the Crisis Mitigation and Recovery Group at DAI.  Ms. Shilling’s work included projects in Indonesia, East Timor, and Liberia, in addition to writing proposals to win new business.

While at Stanford, Kaitlin will pursue research relating to post-crisis reconstruction with a focus on incorporating natural resource management into program design.  After working in post-crisis environments she realized that while lip-service may be paid to environmental issues, they are often seen as an obstacle to be by-passed rather than an integral part of rebuilding a society in a way that repairs the relationship with the land as well as people’s relationships with each other.  She believes strongly that if environment, resource management, peace-building and reconstruction are not approached as a whole there is a danger of slipping back into the cycle of conflict.