Redmond, WA – November 18, 2025 – Against the backdrop of the deepest cuts to U.S. foreign aid in modern history, more than 500 leaders from nonprofits, tech giants, universities, foundations, and diaspora communities gathered last week at Microsoft’s Redmond campus for Global Washington’s 16th annual conference. The event suddenly transformed from a yearly networking tradition into what many are calling a “crisis summit” for one of America’s most influential global development hubs.
Impact of USAID budget cuts
In fiscal year 2025, USAID’s budget reduced by 83 percent, triggering immediate layoffs, abrupt closure of overseas programs, and collapse of multi-year partnerships that had taken decades to build.
The shock waves have reached deep into Washington State, PATH home, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, dozens of innovative NGOs, and corporate social-impact teams at Amazon and Starbucks, as well as the University of Washington’s top-ranked Department of Global Health.
The conference takes place at a time when the national conversation about foreign aid has become deeply polarized. Critics hail the cuts as necessary fiscal discipline, while advocates warn of catastrophic setbacks in the fight against poverty, disease, and instability.
“This isn’t a slowdown — it’s chaos,” said Elizabeth Stokely, Executive Director of Global Washington (GlobalWA), the nonprofit consortium that hosted the sold-out conference. “Organizations are severing ties with local partners abroad, staff are being let go with two weeks’ notice, and the human impact on the ground — from malaria programs in Africa to clean-water projects in Southeast Asia — is already being felt. We’re here to stop the bleeding and figure out how Washington State steps up when the federal government steps back.”
GlobalWA Conference 2025 line-up
Under the urgent theme ‘Mobilizing Washington State for Global Impact, ‘ the day-long gathering featured an unusually high-stakes lineup:
- Atul Tandon, CEO of Opportunity International; Mary Stata, Chief Development Officer of Mercy Corps, and Kammarle Schneider, Chief of Global Health Programs at PATH on private-sector and philanthropic pathways to replace vanished government funding.
- Amazon’s Nancy Dalton and Microsoft’s Naria Santa Lucia on how innovations in WA State can create models that benefit underserved communities at scale globally
- Speed-mentoring and ‘partnership matchmaking’ sessions specifically designed to broker new funding and collaboration deals on the spot.
Whatever one’s politics, the data is unambiguous: decades of bipartisan progress on global health metrics — childhood mortality, HIV treatment, vaccine distribution — now face reversal. Attendees drew parallels to broader cultural debates fueling these policy shifts, noting how domestic ‘culture wars’ over immigration and foreign spending have amplified scrutiny on aid programs, often framing them as distractions from local priorities — a tension echoed in recent analyses of U.S. policy undercurrents.
Today’s attendees say they are not waiting for Washington, D.C. to reverse course.
GlobalWA scholarships
Perhaps most telling: GlobalWA quietly offered an unprecedented number of hardship scholarships to attendees whose organizations lost federal contracts overnight. Early feedback from participants highlights tangible wins, including at least three announced partnerships between tech firms and diaspora-led NGOs for alternative funding pilots, and a commitment from Philanthropy Northwest to double its grant allocations for affected global health initiatives in the coming quarter.
“Washington State has the ninth-largest economy in the country and an extraordinary concentration of global health and development expertise,” Stokely told reporters ahead of the conference. “If any community can pivot from reliance on USAID to a more diversified, resilient model that blends philanthropy, corporate investment, diaspora capital, and state leadership — it’s us.”
“As the federal spigot turns off, we’re building new pipelines,” said Jill Nishi, CEO of Philanthropy Northwest and a featured speaker. “This conference is where those pipelines get designed — in real time, by people in this room.”
In the days since the event, organizers report a surge in follow-up collaborations, with early sign-ups for a new GlobalWA resilience task force surpassing expectations. Registration for future in-person events remains open at globalwa.org. Washington State’s development community is charting a future in a radically changed world.
This piece is written by Maheen Mustafa, former director of Committee for Children, a social impact journalist, and founder of MTG—a Seattle-based media outlet and production house dedicated to elevating BIPOC and immigrant narratives through impactful storytelling. She is also the host, director, and writer of the show @TheAmericanSide – Follow her @MaheenM_.