Noel Twagiramungu is a Crisis, Stabilization and Governance Officer at USAID. He is a seasoned change-maker and social entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience making a difference in peoples’ lives and institutions’ performance through teaching, research, policy analysis, leadership management, monitoring & evaluation, advocacy, intercultural mediation, networking, and global engagement.
Prior to joining USAID, Noel taught for over a decade International Relations and African Politics at UMass Lowell, Hampshire College, Smith College, and the University of Dar es Salaam. He also held research/fellowship positions at Boston University, Tufts University, Harvard and the University of Paris-1 Sorbonne.
In addition, he has worked as a consultant for numerous organizations, including the United Nations Development Programme, the Gothenburg University’s Program on Varieties of Democracy & Leadership Project, Mercy Corps, Search for Common Ground, the Clingendael Institute (Netherlands), the Nordic Africa Institute (Sweden), and Development and Peace (Canada).
Before joining the academia, Noel held several positions as a Human Righs Defender and Civil Society Leader notably at LDGL– a leading human rights umbrella organization in the Great Lakes region covering Rwanda, Burundi, and DRC. He also co-founded and coordinated several grass-roots groups including the Documentation Centre on Genocide Trials in Rwanda(CDIPG), the Forum of Activists Against Torture(FACT), the National Program on Electoral Monitoring in Rwanda, and the Civil Society Support to Grass-root Gacaca justice in Rwanda.
Noel holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, an LLM in International and European Human Rights Law from Utrecht University, and a BA Honors in Linguistics and African Literature. He is fluent in English, French, and several African languages including Swahili, Kinyarwanda, and Kirundi. Noel’s free time is divided between his family, social gatherings, travelling, story-telling, and writing poetry.
