Billy Ford is a program officer for the Burma team at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Ford joined USIP in 2019 after having held positions with The Asia Foundation, Freedom House, and numerous Burmese organizations. 

At The Asia Foundation, he worked on municipal governance reform and led the production of the City Life Survey, which is one of Burma’s largest public perception surveys. Ford spent two years in Burma as Freedom House’s first country representative, where he oversaw programs to support human rights defenders and human rights-oriented think tanks. He has also conducted research on land governance in Burma for the Tharti Myay Foundation and the Global Justice Center. In addition to spending two years in Burma, Ford lived for a year in Vietnam, where he studied Buddhism, and a year in Malaysia as a Fulbright Fellow. 

Ford’s work at USIP focuses on economics and peacebuilding, intergroup bias reduction, religion and conflict, and program evaluation. He leads efforts on the Burma team to optimize program implementation through the use of technology and creative management practices. He is intimately involved in program monitoring and evaluation, including efforts to explore experimental and quasi-experimental methods to measure the effect of USIP’s programs.  

Ford holds a master’s degree in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree in religious studies from Hamilton College.