Strategy Re-organization for a Global Volunteer Program

The Challenge: Scale or Stagnate

The Peace Corps Response program, a specialized service line for highly-skilled volunteers, was stuck. For 17 years, its siloed operational model had prevented it from ever surpassing 5% of the agency’s total volunteer headcount. With an impending leadership transition and a liquidity crunch, a multi-year plan to integrate the program was dead in the water. The challenge became a crisis: without a radical solution, the program was destined for another decade of stagnation.

My Approach: Data-Driven Urgency

As Chief of Operations and Acting Director, I was asked to deliver a fast-track reorganization roadmap in under three months. With no budget and limited data, I took a hands-on, three-pronged approach.

• Rapid Process Mapping: In a 72-hour sprint, I conducted structured interviews across my 30-person team and 13 other business units. This generated a “quick-and-dirty” but highly accurate task analysis, mapping out our core business processes and identifying the biggest integration bottlenecks: partnership development and volunteer skills matching.
• Stakeholder Analysis: The interviews also served as an exercise in active listening, allowing me to build trust and map the political landscape. It became clear that without a forcing mechanism, any partial integration effort would stall indefinitely after the leadership transition.
• Bold Strategy Formulation: Armed with this data, I presented three options to our appointed leadership: Delay the re-organization (and accept the current siloes), partially integrate (creating a variety of half-integrated “Frankenstein” unit), or “Remove the Crutch” by setting a definitive end date for the unit (forcing a full, rapid integration).

Outcome: A New Trajectory for Peace Corps Service

Signing off on the decision to eliminate my own unit and team was one of the hardest of my career.

• Strategic Impact: The “expiration date” created the necessary urgency, rallying the entire agency to fully integrate Peace Corps Response into mainstream operations. The move was celebrated by leadership as a key step in ensuring the agency’s relevance for the future.
• Operational Impact: The silo-breaking was a resounding success, achieving scale-down of the office within 12 months. Moreover, during the transition (expected to be high-friction), the Response program doubled its volunteer delivery numbers, finally breaking the 5% ceiling and hitting 10% of the annual volunteer headcount for the first time in its history.
• Leadership Impact: By leading with transparency and a clear, data-backed rationale, I successfully managed with integrity through a wholsescale change process for the ~30 staff members whose roles were being integrated in other offices or eliminated. This integrity helped earn the trust and praise of my staff during an incredibly difficult transition.