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An Arlington international development worker was furloughed in February after the Trump administration moved to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, abruptly disrupting a decade-long career focused on human rights and inclusion.

Hannah, who worked for a USAID contractor, first learned her position was threatened through a leaked State Department memo on Friday, Jan. 24. Her furlough began at 11:59 p.m. on Feb. 7.

Her employer warned that it could not sustain its business for more than 30 to 60 days without USAID assistance, she said.

The uncertainty followed two executive orders President Donald Trump issued on Jan. 20 concerning gender identity and diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. Hannah said she was immediately required to remove articles she had written about gender identity and disability inclusion from USAID’s website.

The developments left her grieving, angry and fearful, but also determined to defend her career and oppose the administration’s actions. She contacted her congressional representatives and created a letter template that she shared with about 100 friends.

Hannah joined a protest the following Wednesday that drew thousands of people. She said the turnout reassured her that she was not alone. Hearing Sens. Tim Kaine, Mark Warner and other lawmakers describe their response also gave her greater confidence that Congress was listening.

A decade of development work interrupted

Hannah entered international development after serving two years in the Peace Corps in Cameroon. During the following eight years, she worked in a technical role supporting the rights of women and ethnic and religious minorities.

Her responsibilities included developing strategies to incorporate human rights into aid programs, managing budgets as large as $125 million, building project teams, supervising employees and coordinating work across departments.

Although based primarily in the Arlington and Washington area, she also spent two to three weeks at a time working in countries including Iraq, Madagascar and Vietnam.

Projects underway before her furlough included creating a plan to expand tourism-sector employment for people with disabilities in a West Asian country and improving rehabilitation services for Vietnamese people with disabilities linked to Agent Orange exposure.

Hannah said the shutdown endangered more than jobs. She worried about patients losing access to malaria and HIV medications, as well as marginalized communities facing discrimination without adequate human-rights support.

She also lamented the disappearance of project records, reports and other institutional knowledge when the USAID website was taken down.

“Our work was far from over,” she said.

Court rulings bring little certainty

A temporary court injunction affecting USAID employees did not initially help Hannah because she worked for a contractor. She closed her work email account on Friday, Feb. 7, and faced the following Monday knowing she would not be logging in for the first time.

On Feb. 12, Hannah said her employer’s communications director alerted her that Elon Musk had reposted a social-media message containing a screenshot of a LinkedIn post about her team’s work on gender equality and social inclusion. The screenshot named Hannah and two colleagues.

She responded by making her LinkedIn profile completely private, a step she feared would make it harder for recruiters to find her professional history.

Hannah expressed little confidence that the courts would quickly restore her position. After a judge ruled on Feb. 13 that the administration must temporarily reverse its stop-work order for existing USAID contracts, she still had to wait for guidance from her employer.

She said the company had not been paid for work completed between November and January and could not resume operations without receiving that money.

Hannah also said USAID contracts involving climate change, gender equality and gender-based violence in South Africa were receiving termination notices. She argued that those notices were improper because contract terminations require 30 days’ notice and substantial justification.

Twenty applications and one interview

By Feb. 17, Hannah was exploring how to transfer her experience into another industry. She had submitted about 20 job applications in one week and completed a phone interview for a project manager position.

Competition was intense, she said, because friends across the federal government were also confronting freezes and searching for new work.

For Hannah, the loss went far beyond a paycheck. She viewed international development as central to her identity and said she had awakened each morning eager to make a difference. The furlough dismantled that sense of purpose almost overnight.

Still, she had not abandoned hope.

“It will get worse before it gets better,” Hannah said, adding that she hoped the country could eventually reverse the actions and rebuild its democracy. “I will be the first in line to rebuild.”