CATHERINE MARIE CECIL
CATHERINE MARIE CECIL
Country Representative Cambodia, East-West Management Institute, Inc.

Catherine Cecil has more than 30 years of experience working in governance internationally and in the US, including five years in Bangladesh. Ms. Cecil worked on a USAID-funded parliamentary strengthening project that organized the first public hearing to be held on the premises of the Bangladesh Parliament, following a high-profile industrial accident. She also served as the Team Leader for an adaptive governance project that brought people together from the government, civil society and private sector to make positive changes on labor migration, climate finance and other areas. The project contributed to lower costs for sending remittances from migrants to their families in Bangladesh, and supported formation of a new parliamentary caucus on safe migration that lives on after the end of the project. She and her team members completed the World Bank/Harvard University course on Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation. Ms. Cecil has more than 13 years of experience working in Cambodia. At the East-West Management Institute (EWMI) Ms. Cecil has led projects to bring parliaments in ASEAN together with civil society and to increase the availability of independent, evidence-based information to Indigenous women in Cambodia. She served as the Chief of Party of the USAID-funded Cambodian Civil Society Strengthening project from 2018 to 2021, which provided grants, legal support and capacity development support. The project successfully engaged 51,119 Cambodians in democratic processes to advocate for new infrastructure, high quality education and enforcement of laws against illegal logging and beyond. Ms. Cecil began her career as an attorney at the Massachusetts State Senate, where she worked on the state budget and priority legislation. Ms. Cecil then served as the Director of Public Policy for Project Bread – The Walk for Hunger, where she led a successful campaign to build the strongest safety net in the US for hungry children. She has a BA from the University of Wisconsin and a JD from Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, MA.