Ed Rackley
Principal Development Specialist, Stability | ed_rackley@dai.com
Ed Rackley is a philosopher, avid cyclist, and kayaker who entered the world of development on the ground floor, serving in the Peace Corps in Zaire for three years until being evacuated during the country’s collapse in 1991. He then joined Doctors Without Borders in southern Somalia, where he helped establish an emergency surgery ward as well as six feeding centers. Ed continued emergency relief work in Sudan’s civil war, and in Rwanda following the 1994 genocide. Since then, he has worked in dozens of conflict countries in Asia, Central America, and Africa, setting up and evaluating large-scale relief and reconstruction projects, demobilizing and reintegrating child soldiers, and establishing human rights monitoring and reporting systems for a variety of partners.
Moving between Germany and New York City, Ed completed a Ph.D. in philosophy before returning to Doctors Without Borders in 2000, where he pursued field research on populations in conflict, developing the findings into advocacy strategies aimed at national authorities who failed to protect civilians or provide basic services, locking their countries into dependency on foreign assistance. Joining DAI in 2008 allowed Ed to further this arc from rural development and emergency relief through to post-conflict governmental reform. Trauma, destitution, and chronic under-development have many fathers, he said, but none are so prominent as cynical governance. DAI provides an ideal environment to tackle this spectrum of interlocking issues, melding theory and practice.
- Ph.D., New School for Social Research, New York City
- Director and co-founder, Prism Partnerships
“I didn't know that I wanted to work in international development until I got to the developing world.”
— Ed Rackley