Ciara Knudsen leads the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization’s (S/CRS) Libya team at the State Department. She spent last year detailed to the Office of the Deputy Secretary of State on the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) leadership team. Before this, she led S/CRS' Afghanistan engagement. She served 2007- 2009 in Afghanistan as a mission planner at the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) throughout the East and then as the lead for the Integrated Civ-Mil Action Group, the team tasked with developing the Civ-Mil Campaign Plan for Afghanistan.  Previously, Ciara served as lead planner, budget and Congressional liaison for the Secretary’s Civilian Reserve Taskforce and the team to implement Presidential Directive 44. She also served on the Policy Planning staff during the start up of S/CRS and assisted in forming this new capability. Before joining State, Ciara was the Afghanistan Program Manager at the Liechtenstein Institute for Self Determination in 2004-05 and led a Princeton team from the Project on Failed States to conduct fieldwork on U.S. stabilization assistance in Liberia. 

Ciara served in East Timor from 2000-2002 as Social Services Advisor to the Secretary of State for Labor and Solidarity – under the United Nations’ East Timor Transitional Administration and for IRC and UNICEF. While there, she developed the Department of Social Services and programs for vulnerable persons and veterans for the new government. Previously she worked on African Regional Peacekeeping for the International Peace Academy in New York. She has also worked Northern Ireland as a human rights monitor in 1999 and 2000 and in Cambodia as an International Electoral Observer in 1998. Ms. Knudsen received her Masters from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School and a BA in Development Studies from Brown and the University of Zimbabwe. She speaks French, Tetun, and basic Shona, and reads Arabic.