Gillian Caldwell was appointed by the Biden Administration in August to serve in the US Agency for International Development (USAID) from 2021-2024. As the Chief Climate Officer and Deputy Assistant Administrator of USAID, she was responsible for the leadership of technical teams advising USAID offices in more than 100 countries worldwide in areas including climate, energy, infrastructure and engineering, ocean plastics pollution, environmental and social risk analysis, urban interventions, biodiversity and land resource and governance. In her role as Chief Climate Officer, she led completion of the most ambitious Climate Strategy ever for the Agency covering the period from 2022-2030 and advanced a "whole of Agency" response to the crisis to maximize the climate benefits of USAID's budget of more than $25 billion per year. She also served as the lead USAID climate liaison with other federal agencies, the US Congress, NGOs, foreign governments and international and regional organizations.
From 2019-2021, Gillian was consulting with a focus on strategic planning, organizational development and executive coaching.
From 2015-2019, she served as Global Witness' London-based CEO, focusing on investigating natural resource extraction and associated environmental and human rights abuses in order to drive policy changes. During her tenure at Global Witness, the team generated numerous systems-changing impacts, reshaped their strategy to double down on the climate crisis, strengthened its governance, management team and communications capabilities, significantly increased its budget, financial reserves and staff size and opened a new office in Brussels to complement those already in place in London, Washington DC and Beijing.
From 2010-2015, Gillian was consulting full time based from the Washington DC area and Chiang Mai, Thailand. In her consulting practice, Gillian has served as a strategist helping non-profits, foundations, films universities and socially responsible corporations strengthen their organizational capacity, sharpen their strategy and increase their impact.
In 2010, Gillian completed three years as Campaign Director/Executive Director for 1Sky (now merged with 350.org), which she helped build from inception. As a start up short term campaign, 1Sky grew within two years to become the largest collaborative climate and energy campaign in the United States, and combined the force of over 640 allied organizations, a team of organizers in 23 states nationwide, more than 200,000 climate advocates and more than 4000 volunteer “Climate Precinct Captains” covering every state and Congressional District in the country.
Prior to launching the 1Sky campaign, Gillian served as the Executive Director of WITNESS, which was co-founded by musician Peter Gabriel and uses the power of video to open the eyes of the world to human rights abuses. Gillian led WITNESS' rapid expansion during her decade of leadership and helped produce over 30 documentary shorts and films for use in systems-changing advocacy campaigns in partnership with NGOs in dozens of countries around the world. During that time, she also worked with many well-known musicians and actors, including Angelina Jolie, Jackson Browne, Susan Sarandon, and Tim Robbins.
Before her 10 years of leadership at WITNESS, Gillian directed a global undercover investigation and global campaign on the Russian mafia’s involvement in trafficking women for forced prostitution, and produced and directed an influential documentary film which was televised internationally in multiple languages and helped spur policy changes worldwide.
Gillian is also co-editor and author of a book titled Video for Change: A Guide to Advocacy and Activism (Pluto Press, 2005). She received her magna cum laude BA from Harvard University and a cum laude J.D. from Georgetown University, where she was recognized as a Public Interest Law Scholar.
She is a recipient of numerous awards and honors for social entrepreneurship, including an Echoing Green fellowship, the Skoll Award, the Schwab Foundation Award and an Ashoka Award. She was also honored as an MIT Directors Fellow and given a Next Generation Leadership Award by the Rockefeller Foundation. Gillian has benefited from several intensive leadership development programs, including Rockwood’s 'Art of Leadership' and their yearlong program 'Leading from the Inside Out' as well as a Master Class on the 'Art of Transformational Consulting' with Robert Gass.
Gillian has previously served on the Board of Directors for EarthRights International and the Purpose Foundation as well as on numerous Advisory Boards and Committees. She is an athlete and a mom who has lived and worked on four continents. She now resides in the Washington DC area. Her family includes her husband Louis Spitzer (the former Global Digital Director at the ONE campaign co-founded by musician Bono), their young adult children Tess and Finley, and two adopted mutts, Pip and Karma.