How can people and organisations learn from their work, the interventions they support, and the people they work with? How can they assess the merit of projects or project portfolios in complex settings? How can they demonstrate the value of what they do and what they fund? How can they generate evidence for well-informed decision making?

Evaluations and syntheses of evaluations ideally provide deeper insights than day-to-day monitoring and reporting. Some evaluations are routine exercises imposed by funders, others focus on generating new learning. If they are well-designed and carried out carefully, they can serve both purposes. 

For me, every evaluation is unique, with its specific purpose and its context-dependent challenges. I have led in some 40 evaluations, and reviewed hundreds of evaluation reports. Leading and working with diverse, interdisciplinary and cross-country teams, I have never stopped learning.

I am an evaluation generalist with favourite themes – human rights and gender justice, policy advocacy, civil society and broader social development. But I have also evaluated interventions on pre-school, primary and adult education, social norms change, humanitarian and transitional aid, agricultural extension, value chains, among other themes.