Esztella Fazekas

Esztella Fazekas serves as an Acquisition and Assistance Specialist at USAID/Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she plays a pivotal role in designing and executing procurement strategies that advance democratic governance, institutional capacity, and digital transformation initiatives. Her work centers on securing technical assistance and professional services to support policy reform, electoral integrity, audit quality improvement, and energy sector modernization. She manages the full lifecycle of acquisitions—from needs assessment and solicitation development to contract award and performance monitoring—ensuring alignment with USAID’s mission of fostering accountable public institutions and resilient governance structures in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Fazekas collaborates with a diverse array of international and local professional service providers, including think tanks, policy research institutes, and technical consulting firms specializing in public administration and institutional development. While no single contractor dominates her portfolio, she consistently engages firms with demonstrated expertise in governance reform, electoral systems design, and digital government solutions. Her contracting approach emphasizes merit-based selection, technical rigor, and local capacity building, fostering long-term partnerships with vendors who bring contextual expertise and sustainable implementation capacity. Fazekas’s procurement activity is entirely non-set-aside, reflecting a strategic focus on open competition to ensure the highest technical quality and value for mission-critical services. This approach prioritizes subject-matter expertise over socioeconomic classifications, aligning with USAID’s global standards for performance-driven contracting in complex political environments. While small business participation is not formally incentivized through set-asides, her solicitations remain accessible to qualified small and medium-sized enterprises that meet stringent technical requirements. Her primary procurement focus lies in NAICS 541990—All Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services—encompassing policy analysis, institutional assessments, capacity-building training, and digital transformation consulting. She routinely procures services related to public financial management, electoral technology systems, anti-corruption frameworks, and energy policy modeling, demonstrating deep expertise in governance and institutional strengthening domains.