Dr. Samantha “Sam” Alvis is a senior education advisor for USAID’s Asia Bureau. Dr. Alvis’ previous role was the Senior Advisor for Higher Education in the Center for Education in USAID/Washington. In this role, she provided technical support to field offices across all five regions to design activities that engage higher education institutions, post-secondary students, and youth-led and youth-serving organizations and worked to advance higher education and youth programming across sectors within the Agency. She now supports this work focused on the Asia Region.

Prior to joining USAID, Dr. Alvis  was the Director for International Development and Programs at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), where she oversaw a number of projects and initiatives related to the comprehensive internationalization of APLU member campuses.

Samantha completed her Ph.D. in international agricultural development and agricultural communications from Texas A&M University. Her dissertation research focused on the benefits and challenges of higher education development assistance.

Samantha completed her undergraduate and master’s degrees in agricultural education at the University of Arizona where she completed her student teaching on the Tohono O’odham Nation and was certified to teach agriculture and biology at the secondary level.