T-bird alum turns global conflict experience into local impact

If there’s one thing required when working in foreign aid, humanitarian service, NGOs and other impact work, it’s overcoming the ego.

From preventing an ecological disaster in Yemen to containing the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and even peacekeeping in Sudan, which ultimately led to the referendum for South Sudanese independence in 2011, David Gressly’s career in humanitarian assistance for the Peace Corps and United Nations has placed him as a key figure in resolving several international issues in the Middle East and Africa. 

And now, he brings that global experience and perspective as the executive director of the Friends of the Verde River, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the protection of Arizona’s sixth-largest river.

Before graduating with his bachelor’s degree in developmental economics, he began his career in Thessaloniki, Greece, working for the Cotton Research Institute as a research assistant. As a passionate, self-described environmentalist, this introduction to international development compelled him to join the Peace Corps in Kenya, which he says was his first step in developing the skills necessary to deliver humanitarian aid. He spent four years immersed in the culture, developing relationships with farmers and families as he assisted in managing agricultural processes. Two years later, he was put in charge of the Peace Corps’ training center.

“We didn't have access to any kind of telecommunications aside from communicating by call or by mail," David reminisces. The seldom available cellular service and the speed of the postal service encouraged him to focus on being present and learning in the country. “It forced me to really be absorbed into the culture, and without losing my identity at the same time.”

He says that learning process was an odd balance.

“You have to learn how to separate your ego from the work that you're doing while still being able to work, in my case, as an American — not losing that part of me but not having it overshadow relationships either,” he said.

He returned to the United States in 1982 for the MBA program at Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University, then named the American Graduate School of International Management. Attracted by the student body’s diversity, he felt welcomed by the likeminded community’s extensive global experience.

After graduating in 1983, he worked the latter half of the '80s in the Peace Corps in Mauritania, eventually as the country director. He recounted a story of a representative from another organization that wasn’t able to adjust to the country.

“He stepped out of the plane onto stairs, took one look around, and went back inside the aircraft and said, ‘This is not me.’ Organizations want to avoid that happening, you need to make sure that you have what it takes to work in these kinds of environments.”

Those skills contributed to his success after joining Unicef in 1993, where he managed assistance programs in Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea and, finally, India, which focused on emergency response, security and public health. With two decades of experience in facilitating humanitarian aid and development initiatives, he joined the United Nations' mission in the southern region of formerly unified Sudan in 2004.

At the time, Sudan was facing their second civil war. Over two decades of clashes between the North and South left the country in famine, fear and an estimated death toll of 2 million people. One year after Gressly joined, in 2005, both sides signed a peace agreement, officially ending the war. Meanwhile, another conflict was rising in the region.

Gressly notes that the U.N.’s support network was instrumental in ensuring aid was distributed effectively.

“We had a comprehensive system that allowed nonprofit and U.N. personnel to work in remote locations, and it ensured that if something was going wrong, we could pick our people up in two hours."

That system provided them both the logistical security of their supply chains and volunteers as well as confidence from their beneficiaries in the region that assistance agreements would be fulfilled or, in the case of noncompliance, revoked.

After leading projects like delivering food assistance to malnourished civilians in Senegal and peacekeeping in Mali, Gressly was assigned to the U.N.’s Ebaola outbreak response in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 2019, where he was already on a peacekeeping mission. Three years after the 2014–16 outbreak had subsided in West Africa, global attention had since shifted from the disease despite its lingering persistence in several countries. But in 2018, DRC had reported a spike in cases concentrated near the Ugandan border.

His efforts in the region were met with reluctance from organizations in Washington, D.C., which he says feared that a strong response might hurt the private groups involved in the outbreak. His action plan was doubted by others who took a far more conservative — and sometimes opportunistic — approach.

“I remember talking to some people on the National Security Council, and they eventually admitted that they were afraid that if anybody got hurt on the mission, that their careers in Washington would be over.”

That attitude held back other missions from being as effective as Gressly’s. He gives the example involving the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“They told me at one point, ‘It'll take two years to shut this thing down.’ We did it in five months.”

Much of that expedition can be attributed to his strategic placement of ground workers. He was able to follow the disease outbreak through the region and address cases others considered to be too high risk. At the end of his mission, there were no new infections.

Ground presence was critical both to his overarching mission in DRC and his response to the epidemic. Of course, field workers need to be willing to put themselves in unfamiliar territories and situations, but those managing and directing operations, like Gressly, can’t shy away from it either.

“I never advocated people go someplace that I wouldn't go, or hadn't already been,” he says.

But the ability has since changed. With the rising empowerment of fundamentalist and extremist groups, Gressly experienced a major shift in the Middle East and Africa.

“Fundamentalists in the Middle East and Africa are in a kind of competition. You can't use the same techniques. It's hard to be present on the ground because of the threat of being kidnapped, of being a target.”

Previously, he felt working with a humanitarian organization like the U.N. provided him a position of neutrality that afforded security and cooperation from the parties involved in a conflict. He observed that position change while in Yemen.

“Both sides repeatedly said, ‘All the Yemeni are our brothers and sisters, and they all deserve access to humanitarian assistance.’ Both sides had bureaucratic processes with permits and paperwork, but there was the ever-present threat that this assistance would be diverted to militant groups,” he said.

The difficulty of ensuring security poses a threat to ensuring proper support of civilians and increases the risk of diversion of aid to militant groups in the region. Without a ground presence, information is unverifiable, but with a presence, there is no guaranteeing the livelihood of workers. It’s a problem that he says is one of the most difficult issues facing assistance groups today.

“Al-Qaeda captured five of our security personnel and held them hostage for a year and a half. We had a World Food Program person assassinated on the streets in one of the towns. That changes the dynamic. And then you have to think how you can keep people safe.”

Despite the challenge, there was still stability in certain areas.

“I felt safest in the Houthi-controlled areas because, if nothing else, they knew how to control the territory.”

Nevertheless, both sides were cooperative enough to organize the transfer of oil from the slowly sinking FSO Safer, an oil tanker off the Yemen coast in the Red Sea. Described a “ticking time bomb” of a humanitarian crisis by the U.N., businesses, governments and NGOs all united under Gressly’s direction in 2023 to avoid the impending spill into the largest body of water in the Middle East.

After years of navigating crises like these, Gressly eventually closed his chapter in Yemen. Now, he has brought his experience home, joining the Friends of the Verde River as executive director. With only one day separating his retirement from the U.N. and his initiation at the nonprofit, he now runs environmental protection and educational programs for the Verde River Valley community.

He was introduced to the organization through his daughter, who was privy to his plan to relocate to the U.S. Since starting his career in 1977, he spent only a collective five years living in the United States. Friends of the Verde River offered him an opportunity to integrate into the community, readjust to the culture, and combine his passions for river sports and environmentalism.

After learning more about the work the organization does and their cherished positioning in the community, he joined with the mission of protecting the river through the removal of invasive species, sound water management, and offering community educational programs and development grants. Notably, the organization’s partners — the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority and the Salt River Project (SRP) — have expanded private and community grant programs from just $10,000 to amounts in the hundreds of thousands. He's currently targeting the restoration of riparian habitats, a project that has cleared 12,000 acres so far of invasive species. He’s also managing the monitoring of other wildlife like beavers and otters to support their role in the ecosystem. 

According to Gressly, many of his accomplishments wouldn't have had quite the reach without his time at Thunderbird.

“A degree from Thunderbird was necessary, but I also needed the Peace Corps experience; I needed that ground-level experience in the countries I wanted to work in.”

He says those experiences were fundamental in becoming a better listener, negotiator and humanitarian, which required him to put his own bias behind him and learn to empathize with those in the situations he sought to remediate.

Gressly will be using those skills as he prepares the organization and its affected communities for the upcoming development of the Bartlett Dam, which will effectively remove 6 miles from the Verde River.