Mercedes Calderon

Mercedes Calderon serves as a key procurement professional within USAID/Dominican Republic, supporting the agency’s mission to advance sustainable development through targeted technical assistance and institutional strengthening. She manages acquisitions aligned with public sector reform, health system resilience, and private sector engagement, with a strong focus on HIV/AIDS response, justice sector modernization, and government-to-government (G2G) capacity-building initiatives. Her portfolio includes complex service-based contracts for consulting, training, monitoring and evaluation, and technical support services essential to long-term development outcomes. Calderon operates within a mission-driven procurement framework that prioritizes results-oriented outcomes over commodity purchases, ensuring alignment with U.S. foreign assistance objectives and host-country ownership principles. While specific contractor names are not publicly available, Calderon consistently engages with a diverse ecosystem of international and local implementers, including nonprofit organizations, technical assistance firms, and Dominican-based service providers with demonstrated expertise in public administration and health systems. Her contracting patterns reflect a preference for performance-based, outcome-linked agreements that incentivize innovation and local capacity development. She works closely with implementing partners to ensure compliance with USAID’s streamlined acquisition regulations and donor accountability standards. Calderon’s procurement approach is characterized by a 100% non-set-aside orientation, reflecting the nature of USAID’s international development programming, which typically relies on global consortia and specialized entities rather than domestic socioeconomic set-asides. While she does not prioritize 8(a), HUBZone, or SDVOSB classifications, her process emphasizes competitive, transparent, and merit-based selection of qualified vendors with proven regional experience and technical credibility. Her primary procurement focus lies in NAICS categories related to professional, scientific, and technical services—particularly management consulting, public administration support, health services, and institutional capacity building. She routinely procures services in HIV/AIDS program management, judicial reform, governance training, and data systems integration, demonstrating deep expertise in development-sector contracting and results-based management frameworks.