Dr. Diana B. Putman is the Deputy Assistant Administrator for East Africa and for the Office of Development Planning in the Africa Bureau. A career Senior Foreign Service Officer and second generation development specialist, Dr. Putman has spent most of her life overseas and has worked for USAID for 36 years. Most recently she was Mission Director in Timor-Leste for three years (2016-2019). She served before that for five years as Mission Director in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) while overseeing and providing regional services for the Central African Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE), the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, and also Counter-Lord's Resistance Army activities.

Dr. Putman spent three years on detail at the U.S. Africa Command where she oversaw humanitarian, health, and pandemic response activities and was acting Senior Development Advisor for significant periods.  Dr. Putman worked a total of 20 years in Indonesia, Tunisia, Tanzania, Kenya/Regional, and Jordan where she managed or oversaw activities in agriculture, irrigation, potable water, environment and natural resources, private sector and financial development, tax and customs reform, population and health, gender, democracy and governance among others. Other official postings include USAID headquarters in Washington, D.C. where she worked with the Asia and Near East Bureaus, on the Newly Independent States Task Force, as Chair of the Democracy Working Group for the West Bank/Gaza Task Force. She also did post-doctoral research on gender issues in Japan on leave from the Agency, and consultancies in Africa before joining USAID in 1983.

Dr. Putman has three degrees in Anthropology from Bryn Mawr College and a Masters in Strategic Studies from the U.S. Army War College. She also studied at the Universite de Grenoble.  Fluent in French, she remains conversant in Indonesian and Swahili and has studied five other languages.  Dr. Putman has received numerous individual and group awards from USAID, State, and the Department of Defense. She is especially proud to have received a State Department Award for Heroism, one of AFSA's awards for Constructive Dissent, and the Washington Association for Practicing Anthropologists Praxis Award.