Eric Smith on foreign aid
From Who Gets to Represent America: Inside USAID’s Push to Reflect the Full Country · · Global Development Interrupted
“Feed the Future helped prevent famine in vulnerable countries and also sent American students overseas to learn techniques — it used American agricultural expertise and even Republican senators have asked the administration to save the program because it's important for universities in their states.”
On , Eric Smith, Manager of Corporate Communications at VISTA OUTDOOR INC, spoke about foreign aid during Who Gets to Represent America: Inside USAID’s Push to Reflect the Full Country on Global Development Interrupted.
About Eric Smith
Eric Smith, a former Communications Analyst in USAID’s Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA), has discussed his work at the agency and his personal recovery from addiction in several recent interviews. On the podcast *Global Development Interrupted*, Smith described USAID’s partnerships with minority-serving institutions, including Florida International University, and a case competition where teams developed solutions to help female potato farmers in Peru. He stated that when the Trump administration took office, the DEIA office was dissolved within 48 hours, and he lost his job. Smith also said that both USAID Administrator Samantha Power and Chief DEIA Officer Ned Dialo advised staff to spell out the acronym DEI to avoid it being “demonized.” In other appearances, Smith has spoken about his 15 years of active addiction to multiple substances and his subsequent recovery. On *The SoapBox* and the *Objective Recovery Podcast*, he described his path to sobriety, including living in a halfway house where he paid $5 a day, and said he now has over three decades of continuous sobriety. He expressed skepticism about medication-assisted treatment, stating that the pharmaceutical industry made $1.27 trillion and that his personal experience with Suboxone and Vivitrol was that they are “effective, but most of the time they’re not.” Smith also discussed his work with Tangible IQ, a company that helps organizations understand “beyond market” forces such as activism, regulatory politics, and geopolitics, and commented on the electric vehicle market, noting that VinFast, a Vietnamese automaker, announced five models for the U.S. market.