Dr. James H. Small is the first ever Franklin Fellow at the United States Agency for International Development. James serves in the Office of Development Partners/Private Sector Alliances at USAID, where he is primarily responsible for forging public-private sector alliances and providing technical/advisory services in the agricultural, agribusiness, energy, and small-medium enterprise growth sectors of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Sub-Sahara Africa. Part and parcel with these areas and regions of concentration, Dr. Small performs an integral role in advancing the Africa Bureau’s Agribusiness and Trade Promotion Project, and designing the strategic development plans for the Latin America and Caribbean Bureau. Finally, Dr. Small serves on several Inter-Agency Working Groups, (including, Economic Growth and Global Financial Crisis) as well as a member of the Technical Evaluation and Higher Education Review Panels for the Africa Bureau.

Dr. Small comes to USAID from the private sector, where he worked for several years in the residential and commercial real estate business, (Southern Engineering Corporation) as a project developer, supervisor, and legal advisor. Additionally, James worked in the international investment field, where he founded an agribusiness company, (Harvest Development Group, LLC) which invested and developed sustainable agricultural/agribusiness projects with local joint-venture partners in Latin America. Finally, as a board and council member of international development and micro-finance organizations, (including, Katalysis Partnership, Acción International, and the American Refugee Committee) Dr. Small has participated in the development, financing, and oversight of numerous micro-finance projects in several developing countries.

Recently, James earned an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in Political Economy, where he specialized in economic development, enabling environment, governance, institutionalism and agricultural value chains. In addition to his doctorate degree, James received a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, where he subsequently focused on real estate, land-use, zoning, contract negotiation, and commercial transactions in his professional career in the real estate and construction business.