Frances Brown is a joint 2011-12 International Affairs Fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, and Jennings Randolph Afghanistan Fellow at the US Institute of Peace. Previous to this year, Frances worked for USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI)'s Afghanistan program since its inception in 2009 through September 2011, where she held variety of progressively more responsible roles, including Washington-based Program Manager, Kandahar-based Field Program Manager, and Kandahar-based Acting Regional Representative, and finally Deputy Team Leader for Afghanistan. Frances’s previous Afghanistan experience includes a year at the Kabul-based Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit and a consultancy with The Asia Foundation there; immediately before joining USAID, she worked for a year on the Counterinsurgency/Irregular Warfare section of the Quadrennial Defense Review through Booz Allen Hamilton. In addition, Frances spent two years based in Beirut, Lebanon teaching world history at an international baccalaureate school, volunteering in a Palestinian refugee camp, and writing on Lebanese politics for the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, the International Herald Tribune, and other publications. Her other experience includes shorter project management stints in Jordan and Iraq, and internships with the International Crisis Group and the US Embassy in Kuwait. She holds a Master's degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and a Bachelor's degree from Yale.