Nigel Pont is Middle East Regional Program Director at Mercy Corps. Previously, as Research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, he was Afghanistan & Pakistan Program Director for the State Building program. Prior to that, he completed two and a half years as Mercy Corps' Afghanistan Country Director, focusing primarily on rural agricultural development in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, natural resource management in the north east of the country and microfinance in Kabul and Jalalabad.