Associate Director of Management Resources

Sarah B. Smith, MPA

Sarah B. Smith serves as the Management Official in the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response (OPHPR). As the Associate Director for the Management Resources Office (MRO), she is responsible for the management and business operations of the office and its nearly 1000 employees and contractors. She also has budget oversight for the office’s approximately $1.4 billion appropriation.

She recently completed an assignment in CDC’s Nigeria Country Office as the Program Director, Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA). In this role, she led in-country GHSA initiatives and worked with other US agencies and implementing partners to meet strategic public health and programmatic goals. Ms. Smith returned from Nigeria in July 2016 to serve in an Acting role as the OPHPR Deputy Director for Management and Operations with oversight of policy, IT, procurement, business and communications efforts for the organization. She also served as the Chief of Staff for CDC’s Zika Response from October – November 2016.

Ms. Smith began her CDC career in the Public Health Practice Program Office as a Presidential Management Fellow in June of 2001. In 2002, she moved to the CDC Office of the Director to serve as the special policy assistant to CDC’s Chief Operating Officer, developing speeches and presentations, tracking policy and high priority business services issues, and serving as the CDC Management Council’s Executive Secretariat. She completed an assignment in the CDC Washington office in the spring of 2005 and served as an assignee to the World Health Organization (WHO) through a posting with CDC’s Global Immunization Division in 2006. In this capacity, she supported sub-regional operations for WHO’s Inter-country Programme based in Nairobi, Kenya, staffed administrative and financial functions for the office, and participated in two emergency measles and polio campaigns in the Northern and Coastal Provinces of Kenya.

In 1999, she earned her Bachelor of Arts degrees in history and political science from Presbyterian College in South Carolina and in 2001, a master’s in public administration from the University of Georgia.