She then became an aide to United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Elliot Richardson.

In this capacity, she oversaw the resettlement of more than 130,000[3] evacuees from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam after the fall of Saigon.

In 1988, she oversaw the U.S. response to the floods in Bangladesh that had left 25 million people homeless; smaller floods in the Dominican Republic and India; displaced persons in Burundi; a poisonous gas eruption in Cameroon; and a locust plague in Ethiopia.

[1] From 1994 to 1997, Taft was head of InterAction, an alliance of non-governmental organizations dedicated to international aide.

[5] In 1997, U.S. president Bill Clinton nominated Taft to be Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration, and she subsequently held this office from November 10, 1997, to January 19, 2001.