Ms. Somach is a gender, diversity and inclusion specialist with more than 25 years of international and community development experience. She has provided technical assistance and conducted trainings, assessments, evaluations, and research for a variety of donor-funded initiatives in over 20 countries. Her gender and development experience spans a wide range of sectors: democracy and governance, (rule of law, elections and political participation, civil society, local governance), economic growth (economic policy, business development, energy and the environment), health, and education, and multi-sectoral gender-based violence (GBV). She has also worked on issues of immigration, asylum, refugee resettlement and reintegration, as well as civil and human rights.

Ms. Somach served as Gender & Youth Advisor for the USAID/Russia Mission and has worked on gender issues in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, the Middle East, Eastern and Southern Africa, and Southeast Asia. A former banking and securities lawyer, Ms. Somach also has decades of teaching, training, facilitation, and presentation experience, including strategic and project planning for government institutions, private sector companies, and grassroots organizations.

Most recently, Ms. Somach has conducted GBV research for USAID/GenDev; provided GBV technical assistance to a USDOS-funded girls’ empowerment program; and developed a monitoring and evaluation toolkit and webinars for USDOL Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor and Human Trafficking. A mother of three, she is active in the local civil rights community on voting rights and social justice issues, and engages with the school system on equity, diversity and inclusion.

Ms. Somach initially moved to Atlanta to serve as Executive Director of the refugee social service agency, Newcomers' Network (formerly part of Save the Children, and currently New American Pathways), dedicated to refugee women and children. She has an AB in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Michigan and a JD from the Duke University School of Law.