Melissa Marland brings more than 20 years of experience in sustainable development, including 17 years with Chemonics in leadership positions spanning proposal strategy and design, work planning, and performance management. An expert in USAID business development, Melissa most recently served as principal advisor on the new business support team, providing mentorship, capacity building, and quality…
Trust is a vital but often overlooked element of international development. Whether in formal spaces such as state healthcare or informal projects like community campaigns, trust has the power to make or break development initiatives. If those involved in a project trust each other, the chances of its success and sustainability are vastly improved. Yet…
Trust flavors our life choices. It lays the foundations of our social and professional relationships. It colors the way we engage with organizations, services, and people. Globally, trust in public institutions appears to be decaying. The ‘fake news’ phenomenon has damaged perceptions of traditional media. The COVID-19 pandemic gave rise to widespread vaccine hesitancy, in some…
Trust is a familiar concept, yet one too often ignored in programme design. It isan essential ingredient of mutually beneficial human relationships. Internationaldevelopment projects, particularly those in the field of governance, rely on relationshipsto meet their objectives. Trust smooths collaboration between project staff, donors,local stakeholders, governments, and, ultimately, the people who benefit fromprogramming. Despite its…
Evidence-based decision making not only leads to more successful development outcomes, it can also enable improved agility on projects, allowing changes to be made as fresh information becomes available. Jennifer Simpson, Chemonics’ new senior advisor for applied research, explains why development practitioners should focus as much on applied research as on other aspects of development…
“Research enables us to identify how best to address the challenges that impact society. The good thing is that governments are starting to acknowledge the potential for research to drive national development.” Joy is unequivocal, and her belief in her work is easy to see. “This is my passion: ensuring that evidence can impact policy…
Dr. Jennifer Simpson is a highly driven and accomplished research and evaluation expert, experienced in study design, ethics, project management, data management, new business, and community-led development. At Chemonics, she leads development, testing, and quality improvement of applied research methods, with an emphasis on design and development of priority learning agendas, and development of rigorous…
Tamer Al-Assa’d is a Water Utility, Governance, and Infrastructure Expert with roughly 20 years of experience working for donors and the private and public sectors. Tamer managed and worked on many projects in the fields of project design, planning, development and management of water and sewerage infrastructure, water utility management, water governance and institutional development, water…
Anne Kottmeier is Chemonics’ Chief Information Officer. She has more than 20 years of global experience in business transformation and information technology management for Fortune 500 companies and non-profits across multiple industries. Most recently, Anne served as the Chief Product Officer of AccelerEd, a Global Distance Learning Institution with more than 90,000 students in 150 locations…
During this session our panel of experts presented an overview of prevailing groundwater development and management challenges in the South African Development Community (SADC) region and discussed interventions for groundwater governance through improvement of policy, legal and institutional frameworks, effective groundwater knowledge management, and mainstreaming groundwater governance into River Basin Organizations. The USAID…
Angela Elong is a Global Health Specialist with more than 9 years of experience working in health supply chain programs, including technical areas of laboratory systems strengthening, monitoring and evaluation, data management, HIV/AIDS, malaria, family planning. She currently serves as Technical Director for Global Health Supply Chain Technical Assistance Francophone Task Order. Angela joined Chemonics…
The five-year Lecture Pour Tous program, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and completed in December 2021, made marked improvements in early grade reading outcomes in Senegal. The initiative directly supported reform efforts led by the Ministry of Education (Ministère de l’Education Nationale, or MEN) to use evidence-based approaches, including national…