Ritu Sharma, MPH, is the Vice President for US Programs and Policy Advocacy at CARE USA. She guides the organization’s advocacy towards the US Government, international institutions and across 42 national governments. In addition, Ritu leads CARE’s nascent work across the United States providing emergency response to disasters and economic opportunities for women post-disaster.
Ritu is one of three co-chairs of the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN), a bipartisan coalition of international development and foreign policy practitioners, advocates, and experts. MFAN promotes more effective and accountable U.S. foreign assistance.
Prior to CARE, Ritu was a Regional Director at the International Youth Foundation (IYF) working on young women’s economic opportunity, and a Senior Fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) leading the joint CSIS-IYF Youth, Prosperity, and Security Initiative.
Ritu is author of Teach a Woman to Fish: Overcoming Poverty Around the Globe (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014).
Ritu holds a BSFS in international economics from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and an MPH from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Hygiene and Public Health.