Molly Knapp

Molly Knapp joins the GHD program after four years of implementing democracy, human rights, and governance (DRG) initiatives at Democracy International (DI). Based in Washington, DC, and managing programs funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in El Salvador, Kosovo, Liberia and Trinidad & Tobago, Molly’s portfolio has spanned strengthening municipal governance, teaching civic and voter education, promoting youth development, fostering community resilience, and reducing the risk of victimization of refugees and migrants. Prior to joining DI, Molly worked as a litigation paralegal for Cleary Gotlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, where she provided legal and administrative support for antitrust, securities, and civil litigation matters, as well as pro bono asylum, immigration, electoral systems, and housing cases. As an undergraduate student, Molly served as a policy intern for the office of U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and researched cyber and homeland security, foreign affairs, and U.S. election infrastructure and security. Molly’s undergraduate academic pursuits focused on Latin American policies, enriched by her senior thesis on transitional justice in post-dictatorial Argentina and Chile, a visit to El Salvador to learn about the country’s civil war and meet community activists preserving historical memory and effecting restorative justice, and a summer teaching at Finca del Niño in Honduras. As she continues her education at Georgetown, Molly is focusing her studies on Social Innovation, Program Design & Evaluation, and Sustainable Development Finance. She is interested in working at the intersection of the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to drive social, environmental, and financial benefit. The GHD experience that has most energized Molly so far was the inaugural Rwanda Summer Startup Immersion Program, which allowed her to visit Kigali in May 2025 to learn about the startup ecosystem, meet changemakers in the accelerator and financing spaces, and work with young entrepreneurs to incubate their ideas in a startup sprint. Molly grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of Notre Dame.

Summer internship

Interning in Nairobi, Kenya, with Volunt ā s – an international research and evaluation advisory – allowed me to apply my qualitative and quantitative research design and analysis skills to support the people of Sudan during the country’s current crisis. As a Data Analyst, I supported the final program evaluation of an EU-funded program that is working to strengthen coordination between national- and state-level teacher training institutions and provide education in emergencies training for educators of internally displaced students within Sudan and of Sudanese refugee children in Chad, Egypt, and Ethiopia. I also worked on a third-party monitoring exercise for the UNICEF Sudan Country Office’s humanitarian aid interventions across the health, nutrition, education, WASH, and child protection sectors. I developed data collection tools for key informant interviews (KIIs) and focus group discussions; led virtual KIIs with key project stakeholders; and designed site visit observation checklists and quantitative CAPI survey questionnaires. I also gained new skills in data visualization, using Power BI to create a dashboard to convey data effectively to UNICEF.