Eurasia Foundation Welcomes Six New Trustees

Eurasia Foundation is delighted to announce six new members of our Board of Trustees. Adelicia Cliffe, Margot Ellis, Sara Kennedy, Randi Levinas, Lisa Magno, and Marsha McGraw Olive bring decades of expertise in international affairs to our organization. Please join us in welcoming them. 

Adelicia Cliffe is a partner at Crowell & Moring, where she helps companies in a broad range of industries—from professional services, software, and technology to traditional defense contracting—navigate the complex requirements around doing business with the U.S. government, with a particular focus on cross-border and national security issues. In addition, Cliffe advises clients on regulatory issues related to foreign investment in the United States, representing clients with respect to national security reviews by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and measures to mitigate foreign ownership, control, or influence (FOCI mitigation). 

Margot Ellis is an accomplished executive with more than 30 years of experience in international development and humanitarian response with the U.S. Agency for International Development and the United Nations, including work in transformational, in-conflict, emergency, and fragile state situations. She was the Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for USAID’s Bureau for Europe and Eurasia (E&E) from 2016 to 2022, also serving as Acting Assistant Administrator for two and a half years. She received two Presidential Meritorious Awards in 2022 and 2009 and is a member of the Senior Foreign Service. Since her retirement in April 2022, Ellis has been enjoying traveling, mentoring foreign service officers, providing advisory support to various missions in the Europe and Eurasia region, and is serving on several boards of directors, including the Ukraine-Moldova American Enterprise Fund. 

Sara Kennedy is the Operations Director, Commercial, for Two Six Technologies, a tech company that develops advanced solutions for national security customers.  She focuses on the tech/commercial sector of the organization, working in project finance, contracts, and overall operations. Kennedy brings deep expertise in nonprofit, international, and commercial financial management to the Eurasia Foundation Board. She began her career in public accounting as an auditor with Gelman, Rosenberg & Freedman, where she specialized in nonprofit organizations and became recognized as one of the firm’s leading experts in U.S. government audit standards. As an audit supervisor, she managed the planning and execution of roughly 50 audit engagements annually and worked closely with client leadership to ensure accurate, timely, and compliant reporting. Her work took her across Africa, Europe, Eurasia, and the Middle East, supporting international humanitarian and relief organizations. 

Randi Levinas is Founder & CEO of Levinas Advisory. Levinas was the first COO and the first female Executive VP of the U.S.-Russia Business Council (USRBC), a non-profit trade association of 200 corporate members, and oversaw its $2 million budget. She led the organization’s strategy and advocacy efforts, as well as its day-to-day operations. She also oversaw all external relations, programming, membership, administration and staff, and led the design and execution of the organization’s initiatives. While at USRBC, Levinas dedicated six years as executive director of the Coalition for U.S.-Russia Trade, an organization created by USRBC that operated in collaboration with other leading business organization dedicated to maximizing deliverables for U.S. companies in negotiations on Russia’s WTO accession and subsequent Congressional approval of legislation. The Coalition enhanced U.S. companies’ global competitiveness by ensuring a level-playing field in their access to Russia’s market. Later, she was a key player in business coalitions strategizing and defending corporate concerns with respect to implementation issues associated with sanctions and export controls. 

Lisa Magno is a seasoned international development leader with over two decades of experience advancing democratic governance, economic opportunity, and public service across Asia, Latin America, and Europe. As a senior executive at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), she led multi-disciplinary teams of up to 100 professionals and overseen programs valued at up to $50 million in some of the world’s most complex and dynamic environments. Magno most recently served as Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for USAID’s Bureau for Europe and Eurasia, where she ensured accountability for $26 billion in budget support to Ukraine during wartime. She has worked at USAID since 2003, serving in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Guatemala and representing the U.S. in strategic dialogues with partner governments in Albania and North Macedonia. Her leadership helped sustain essential services under crisis conditions, reinforced local ownership of development, and advanced U.S. foreign policy objectives.  

Marsha McGraw Olive, PhD, is a development practitioner and scholar of Eurasian affairs. Since 2018, she has served on the faculty of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) as Adjunct Professor of European and Eurasian Studies, for which she received an Outstanding Excellence in Teaching Award in 2020. She was awarded a George F. Kennan Fellowship in 2022 to study Central Asia in the Shadow of Ukraine and Afghanistan at the Wilson Center. Dr. Olive joined the World Bank’s Soviet team in 1991 and participated in its first mission to Central Asia in 1992. During a thirty-year career, including as a World Bank Manager and Senior Vice President of Eurasia Foundation from 1997 to 2002, she led strategic planning, multi-million-dollar investment portfolios, and small grant programs in Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Her World Bank service from 1988 to 2015 included Acting Country Director in Moscow and Country Manager in Tajikistan, with the rank of ambassador.