Carter Saunders

Carter Saunders serves as a key procurement lead within USAID/South Sudan, responsible for managing technical service acquisitions critical to sustaining U.S. diplomatic and development operations in a high-risk, resource-constrained environment. Focused on ensuring uninterrupted mission functionality, Saunders oversees the acquisition of professional, scientific, and technical services that underpin infrastructure resilience, life support systems, and institutional capacity-building initiatives. Their portfolio includes contracts for engineering support, security operations, logistics coordination, and technical advisory services essential to maintaining operational continuity in one of the world’s most fragile contexts. Saunders operates within a mission-driven procurement framework that prioritizes agility, compliance, and mission-critical performance over cost alone. Contractor relationships are characterized by a broad, non-exclusive engagement with qualified service providers capable of operating under austere conditions. Saunders works with a diverse pool of international and local firms experienced in humanitarian logistics, security risk management, and technical assistance delivery, with no single vendor dominating the award landscape. The procurement approach emphasizes responsiveness, adaptability, and proven field experience over long-term sole-source arrangements, fostering a dynamic vendor ecosystem capable of rapid scale-up during crises. Set-aside preferences are uniformly non-targeted, with 100% of acquisitions competed without socioeconomic set-asides such as 8(a), HUBZone, or SDVOSB. This reflects a strategic prioritization of mission-critical capability and operational readiness over socioeconomic objectives, consistent with the agency’s emergency-response mandate in unstable environments where qualified small businesses may be limited or unable to meet operational demands. The primary NAICS classification is 541990, encompassing all other professional, scientific, and technical services. Saunders specializes in procuring niche technical services including conflict-sensitive infrastructure maintenance, humanitarian engineering, security risk assessments, and governance advisory support—all tailored to the unique operational and security constraints of South Sudan’s operating environment.