Piper Stege Nelson is NDI’s senior development manager, focused on identifying and securing private funding sources for the Institute’s work around the world. Her team is in charge of outreach to private donors, corporations and foundations, in addition to managing fundraising events for the Institute.
Before assuming this position in 2008, Ms. Nelson worked with the Institute’s women’s political participation team, during which time she contributed substantively to proposals, advised on program implementation and authored a training manual for women contesting the 2008 local elections in Sierra Leone. In addition, Ms. Nelson produced and worked with a film crew to create “Side by Side,” a documentary short about the 50/50 Group of Sierra Leone, which was awarded the 2007 Madeleine K. Albright Grant. She was also the primary NDI staff contact for the iKNOW Politics initiative.
Before joining the Institute in 2006, Ms. Nelson served as a program officer with the Newly Independent States program in the Office of International Affairs at the Environmental Protection Agency where she designed a program to integrate gender concerns (i.e., how issues and programs affect women and men differently) into every project’s plan and evaluation. She also worked to improve public participation in local environmental decisionmaking in the Caucasus, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Ukraine. Earlier, Ms. Nelson worked on a number of state political campaigns and served as legislative director for Texas State Representative Jessica Farrar. She also was awarded a Fulbright grant, and spent a year in Ecuador studying the economic, social and health conditions of women working on rose plantations around Cayambe.
Ms. Nelson earned her Master’s degree from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and her undergraduate degree in Spanish and Women’s Studies from Carleton College in Minnesota.
