Beeta Ehdaie

Unites States Department of State

Senior Advisor, Women's Economic Issues, and Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for Economics, Environment and Energy

Description

Dr. Ehdaie serves as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment and Senior Advisor on women’s economic issues to the Assistant Secretary of Economic and Business Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. She led in the conception and now the development of the Economic Bureau’s “Providing Opportunities for Women’s Economic Rise” (POWER) initiative. She also advises on U.S. policy and programs aimed at fostering women’s economic participation in the global economy, supporting entrepreneurship, digital and financial inclusion, multilateral development finance policies on environmental and social safeguards and sustainable economic growth. In her role as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary, Dr. Ehdaie works on foreign policy matters pertaining to global health and climate, which entails organizing and shaping the Department’s engagement on economic response to climate change and the global pandemics, including inclusive and equitable infrastructure. Women’s economic empowerment is a critical component to economic development and response to the global pandemic and climate change. In this vein, Dr. Ehdaie supports U.S. policy implementation aimed at fostering gender equality, women’s economic empowerment and equitable response to economic recovery and development. Prior to joining the Department of State, Dr. Ehdaie completed her Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health where she served as clinical lead for the Performance Monitoring and Accountability Project (PMA2020). Dr. Ehdaie’s technical background has been interdisciplinary at its core, and having enabled her to work with a variety of stakeholders, scientists to policymakers, to drive and apply innovative research and methodologies to address global health challenges and support inclusive public health policies and programs. Women’s economic advancement has been at the heart of Dr. Ehdaie’s international development experience having worked in South Africa and Uganda to transfer technologies from the lab to the field to empower local women entrepreneurs. Dr. Ehdaie is also co-founder and former Chief Technology Officer of Silivhere Technologies, Inc., a start-up company that develops water treatment technologies for low-income communities. Dr. Ehdaie’s experience and innovative skills as a social entrepreneur were instrumental to her appointment as a Science Policy Fellow for the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences and recipient of the Franklin Award in the Bureau of Economics and Business Affairs. Dr. Ehdaie is a graduate and Rodman Scholar of the University of Virginia, where she obtained her Bachelors, Masters in Biomedical Engineering, and Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering, and was recipient of the NIH Infectious Diseases and Biodefense Training Fellowship, through the University of Virginia (UVA), School of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and International Health.