A Steward of Assistance
From the American People
By Alyssa Wilson Leggoe
I spent 20 years in the Foreign Service, serving under five administrations — Republican and Democratic. I led a regional mission of nearly 250 people working across six countries, running some of USAID's largest health and humanitarian assistance programs. I put in 60-hour weeks to meet the planning and reporting Congress required of us and hosted their delegations when they came to see the work. In the weeks before foreign assistance was frozen in January 2025, I served as Chargé d'Affaires at our embassy in Senegal, leading a team drawn from 24 U.S. government agencies.
Throughout my career I considered it an honor and a privilege to serve as a steward of assistance from the American people.
Shortly after the executive order pausing foreign assistance and public statements describing USAID employees as "radical lunatics," the Ambassador called the embassy community together in Dakar. USAID staff around the world had been placed on administrative leave, and there were articles in the American press that we might require U.S. military escorts to depart safely from post. I sat in the front row with leadership from other agencies, facing him. My team was shocked and afraid, and they were looking to me for answers I did not have.
The Ambassador was addressing a list of questions generated before the meeting through a digital form. An anonymous member of the embassy community had asked if he were planning to investigate me for treason. I will never forget that moment.
“How could anyone accuse me of treason?”
Me. The same officer who a little more than six years earlier had evacuated my three children — still in shorts — to a cold Virginia winter from Haiti after a gang had opened fire on my embassy motorcade. We had five days to prepare to leave Haiti in December 2018 after the State Department authorized a voluntary departure for personnel due to the worsening political violence. After my own motorcade was attacked, I knew that even the embassy’s armored vehicles were not enough to keep my children safe on their ride to and from their school in Haiti. And so we packed our suitcases and uprooted our lives to Virginia, enrolling the kids with a few days’ notice into new schools in Virginia.
And I continued to serve. How could anyone accuse me of treason?
After the February 2025 town hall in Senegal, I reminded the embassy Country Team — composed of leaders of every U.S. government agency at post — that I had taken an oath to defend the Constitution. That I could carry out policies I deeply disagreed with, to cancel life-saving programs and execute a reduction in force that jeopardized careers and livelihoods of people I respected and admired. I would not, however, allow myself or my colleagues to be accused of treason.
My former colleagues at USAID and I are all patriots. We have jeopardized our safety and that of our families in service to the U.S. government and advance U.S. national security in some of the world’s most difficult operating environments. Nothing anyone says or does will alter that.
My employment ended in 2025, along with that of thousands of my colleagues. Little more than a year later, my time of service feels both like a lifetime ago and like yesterday.
Our service to America deserved better.
Alyssa Wilson Leggoe is one of more than 2,200 former USAID Foreign Service officers and Civil Service employees appealing their terminations before the Merit Systems Protection Board. This fall their cases move through discovery, one of the most demanding stages of an appeal, with deadlines across 18 consolidated groups. Your gift helps fund the legal representation that ensures every appellant's case is heard."