Senior Program Officer for Major Donors

Julia Ganson is a Senior Officer for Major Donors at the Government Accountability Project. Her work is focused on development, with an emphasis on major donors, and Julia also assists the International team on fundraising and programmatic work.

Julia managed international training and fellowship programs for the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) in the Executive Education Office of Syracuse University from 2008 until 2016. The programs hosted democratic reformers in civil society and academia from 15 MENA countries. Several individuals from one of the programs were hosted by GAP for their 8-week professional affiliations, and this was one of the first ways she became familiar with our work. Her other previous work with the organization came in 2014 and 2015 when she was involved in sponsoring American Whistleblower Tours at Syracuse University. Working with Rob Shetterly for Americans Who Tell the Truth (AWTT), she has interviewed several whistleblowers (such as Louis!) and wrote the bios to accompany their AWTT portraits.

As part of the Middle East fellowship projects, she traveled extensively in the Middle East & North Africa, overseeing related fellowship programs at two Lebanese universities and organizing alumni conferences and events for the extensive network of more than 300 alumni in MENA. In 2017-18 she lived in Occupied Palestine, teaching and doing research at Birzeit University, as part of a Fulbright fellowship in the Muwatin Institute for Democracy & Human Rights. She is now writing about Palestinian popular resistance and the role of internationals in Palestine-Israel.

Before joining Executive Education at the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, she held faculty positions in departments of sociology at several liberal arts colleges. She has worked in educational evaluation as a school reviewer for the New Zealand government and in education assessment at universities, and in development and program evaluation for children’s organizations in the U.S. Julia has a Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University. Some of her related interests are in organic farming and sustainable agriculture (what first took her to New Zealand), community social justice work, political art, and running/walking/hiking.

[email protected]
(202) 926-3315