Country Representative, Mongolia

Sara L. Taylor is The Asia Foundation’s country representative in Mongolia.

She formerly served as country representative in Bangladesh. She has more than nineteen years of international development experience with specialization in democracy and governance in politically unstable, ethnically diverse, transition, and post-conflict contexts. Taylor joined The Asia Foundation in 2014 as deputy country representative in Bangladesh. She has prior experience living and working in Bangladesh, including service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Natore, a town in the northwest of the country.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Taylor was the democracy and governance officer in the Office of Sudan and South Sudan Programs at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for five years, where she provided technical, management, and country expertise in Washington, Khartoum, and Juba. In the context of post-conflict political and social transition, she worked across a broad range of democracy and governance issues and critical political processes, including the 2010 nationwide elections in Sudan, the 2011 Southern Sudan Self-Determination Referendum, and South Sudan’s independence.

Taylor also previously managed the Bangladesh and Malaysia programs at the International Republican Institute (IRI). She cultivated relationships with local partners, civil society groups, activists, political parties, and parliamentarians in Malaysia, and during a period of increasing political violence in Bangladesh, managed long- and short-term international observation missions of the country’s ninth parliamentary elections. In addition, she observed the 2008 parliamentary elections in Mongolia with IRI, as well as the 1998 parliamentary and 1999 presidential elections in Slovakia with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Education: Sara Taylor holds a master’s degree in Sustainable Development under the Graduate Program in Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Management at the School for International Training, and a bachelor’s degree in Russian Studies and English from The College of William and Mary.