GARy NEWTON
UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT SPECIAL
ADVISER ON ORPHANS AND
VULNERABLE CHILDREN
UNITED STATES AGENCy FOR
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
UNITED STATES
Gary Newton is a Senior Foreign Service Officer with the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID). He began his current
appointment as the U.S. Government Special Advisor for Orphans and
Vulnerable Children in July 2008. The position is mandated by U.S.
Public Law 109-95, the Assistance for Orphans and Other Vulnerable
Children in Developing Countries Act of 2005. The law calls for the
U.S. Government (USG) response to orphans and vulnerable children
to be comprehensive, coordinated and effective. Mr. Newton is based
at USAID headquarters in Washington D.C. and from this base works
with colleagues from across seven USG departments, the UN and NGO
community.
Mr. Newton has worked on a variety of human resource strengthening
initiatives, among them, a bilateral assistance program which enabled
Malawi to significantly expand its cadre of village health workers; a
partnership to strengthen the education system’s capacity to meet
the human resource needs of Egypt’s private sector; a project to help
countries develop the human capacity required to scale-up national
HIV/AIDS programs; and, an initiative to raise awareness of the human
resource needs of the social welfare sector, especially the critical
need to invest more in those who care for and protect children.
Mr. Newton has thirty years of international development experience,
twenty-one of which have been spent outside the United States. As
a USAID Foreign Service Officer, Mr. Newton served in Malawi (19881992) and Kenya (1992-1996), where he was in charge of USAID
assistance to the health sector; Egypt (1996-2000), where he was an
Associate Mission Director in charge of assistance for health, education
and democracy and governance; and Namibia (2004-2008), where he
was the USAID Mission Director.
Mr. Newton spent four years (2000-2004) at USAID headquarters in
Washington in the Bureau for Global Health where he helped establish
the HIV/AIDS Office and was then the first Director of the Office of
Regional and Country Support.
Before joining USAID as a career officer, Mr. Newton spent four years
in Bangladesh (1983-1987), first, as Assistant Director of Engender
Health’s Asia Regional Office, and then as an advisor in the USAID/Bangladesh Population and Health Office. Mr. Newton served as a Peace
Corps volunteer in Agadez, Niger (1974-75).
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Mr. Newton is a graduate of Colby College in the State of Maine in
the U.S. and has a Master’s Degree in Teaching from Smith College in
Northampton, Massachusetts and a Master’s Degree in Public Health
from Columbia University in New York City.
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