Obama Nominates Gayle Smith to Lead U.S.A.I.D.WASHINGTON

— President Obama nominated Gayle Smith, a senior White House official, on Thursday to be the next administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, administration officials said.  If confirmed by the Senate, Ms. Smith, a longtime development and Africa specialist in the Clinton and Obama administrations, would succeed Dr. Rajiv Shah, who left the agency in February after five years on the job.  Ms. Smith, 59, who is well-known in Washington development circles, would be responsible for leading the government’s response to humanitarian disasters like the earthquake in Nepal, the refugee crisis in Syria and the receding Ebola epidemic in West Africa, as well as managing the agency’s $20 billion budget.  She would also have to figure out a way to duplicate her predecessor’s skillful managing of congressional Republicans. Dr. Shah was widely credited with successfully defending the agency’s budget at a time of belt-tightening and intense partisanship. He was also known for innovative programs that sought to tackle global health and development challenges in unusual ways. Photo Gayle Smith, special assistant to President Obama and a senior director on the National Security Council, at a Society for International Development meeting in 2011. Credit Jewel Samad/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images  For instance, last fall, during the height of the Ebola epidemic, Dr. Shah announced the Fighting Ebola Grand Challenge, in which the agency invited inventors to devise equipment for front-line medical workers fighting Ebola. The challenge produced an entry from Johns Hopkins University, with a team that included a Baltimore wedding dress designer, Jill Andrews. She designed a simplified protective suit that takes the wearer only eight steps to shed instead of 20, thus lowering the risk of exposure to the disease.  Ms. Smith should be able to match Dr. Shah’s success, said Liz Schrayer, president of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, a group of businesses and nonprofits that supports development, in part because she has backed the same initiatives.  “Gayle supports prioritizing economic growth and making sure countries have skin in the game and are committed to real reform,” Ms. Schrayer said. “That’s where I think Republicans who have been supportive of Raj will be supportive of Gayle.”  But Dr. Shah had missteps as well. The Associated Press reported in 2014 that during his tenure, U.S.A.I.D. operated a social media account to encourage young Cubans to revolt against the Castro government. The secret program ran out of funds in 2012, after two years; Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, called it “dumb, dumb, dumb” after it was disclosed.  The Obama administration has since taken steps to normalize relations with Cuba. But Ms. Smith will inherit other efforts from her predecessor, in particular managing the end of the battle against the Ebola epidemic and trying to ensure that the next time the virus flares up, the world has a better and faster response.  She has experience in that area. As special assistant to Mr. Obama and senior director for development and democracy on the National Security Council, she helped coordinate the administration’s response to the epidemic last year, including Mr. Obama’s decision to deploy 3,000 American troops to Liberia.  Ms. Smith spent 20 years in Africa — Ethiopia, Sudan and Kenya — first as a freelance journalist for the British Broadcasting Corporation, Reuters, The Associated Press and The Boston Globe, and then with nongovernmental groups. She is a co-founder of the Enough Project to end genocide. Next in World Chinese and Russian Navies to Hold Joint Drills in Mediterranean