Elenita Lahens

Elenita B. Lahens serves as a Human Resource Specialist at USAID/Haiti, where she plays a critical role in securing specialized personal services contractors to support the agency’s mission of building institutional resilience and technical capacity across Haiti’s public systems. Her procurement activities focus on acquiring expert human capital to deliver on-the-ground assistance in governance, health, rule of law, and economic development. She manages a portfolio of non-commercial, performance-based personal services contracts that require high levels of subject-matter expertise, cultural competency, and operational flexibility in a complex, low-resource environment. Her work ensures that USAID’s technical interventions are staffed by qualified U.S. and third-country nationals aligned with Haiti’s development priorities. Elenita collaborates primarily with firms specializing in human capital consulting, organizational development, and administrative support services. While no single contractor dominates her portfolio, she consistently engages with a diverse pool of vendors offering tailored human resources, workforce planning, and institutional strengthening services. Her contracting patterns reflect a preference for experienced, vetted service providers capable of operating under challenging conditions, often requiring rapid mobilization and adaptive management frameworks. She maintains professional, compliance-driven relationships with contractors who demonstrate proven track records in international development contexts. Her set-aside preferences reveal a strong orientation toward open competition, with 98.2% of acquisitions conducted without socioeconomic set-asides. Only 1.8% of awards are competed under the 8(a) program, indicating a primary reliance on full and open competition rather than targeted small business set-asides. This reflects the specialized nature of her acquisitions, where technical qualifications and operational readiness often outweigh socioeconomic criteria. Elenita’s procurement activity is overwhelmingly concentrated in NAICS 812990 (All Other Personal Services), accounting for 85.6% of her portfolio, reflecting her core need for expert consultants in HR, organizational development, and public sector capacity building. Secondary categories include office administrative services and management consulting, underscoring her role in enabling efficient, mission-aligned human resource operations within a dynamic international development environment.