Nicole Etchart is Co-Founder and CEO of NESsT. Ms. Etchart has over twenty years experience in international development, nonprofit management and civil society development. She has held numerous executive positions with international organizations working in the USA, Africa, Asia and Latin America. From 1995-97, as the first Executive Director of the Association for Women in Development (AWID), Ms. Etchart engineered AWID's transition from a volunteer-run association to a professional international membership organization of over 1000 gender-in-development researchers, development practitioners and policymakers in over 80 countries. From 1991-1994, she was the founding Program Manager of the Third Sector Project, an NGO development initiative within the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies. The program provided capacity-building and management assistance to leaders of NGOs in seven countries across for Central and Eastern Europe. For five years prior, she was Director of the Global Education Office at Catholic Relief Services (CRS) where she oversaw 20 programs focusing on increasing awareness of poverty and development issues.
From 1984-86, as a recipient of the prestigious Presidential Fellowship for "fast-track" public leaders, Ms. Etchart served in both the Foreign Agricultural Service of the US Department of Agriculture, overseeing the implementation of food assistance programs in Africa, and in the Caribbean Affairs Office of the US Agency for International Development, responsible for the implementation of the Caribbean Development Initiative, an effort aimed to foster trade and development. In 1983-1987, along with three international development professionals, Ms. Etchart was a volunteer co-founder of Communications for Development, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the US public on international development issues. There, Ms. Etchart was involved in the production of several multi-media programs on international development and interdependence.
he currently sits on the Boards of Directors of Colegio Media de Santiago and the Comité para la Democratización de la Informática (CDI) in Chile. Ms. Etchart holds an M.A. in International Studies from the Johns Hopkins University, Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) with a focus on economic development and Latin American Studies and a B.A., magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa in Latin American Studies from Tulane University where she received the President´s award for academic excellence and extra curricular contribution. She speaks four languages fluently (English, French, Portuguese and Spanish). She was born and currently lives in Santiago, Chile.