UPENDO CONSULTING - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Co - Founder
• Senior Partner

Fernando is a Programme Evaluator and Communications and Stakeholder Engagement Specialist with over 10 years of experience spanning the areas of training, communications, and results management and programme evaluation. He worked professionally as a research journalist for nearly a decade with large media entities including CBC Radio-Canada. He now brings his communications expertise into his evaluation work by actively facilitating stakeholder engagement through multiple communications platforms. Fernando has led and executed a number of large UN evaluations and has over 15 years of experience in providing professional translation services in English, French, and Spanish.

Job Titles:

• Co - Founder
• Senior Partner
• Gender Specialist
• Senior Results Management Specialist

Katherine Garven is a Senior Results Management Specialist with over 10 years of experience designing, implementing and evaluating human rights and inclusive development programming in vulnerable contexts across the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and North America (including Indigenous communities). She has led the design and implementation of a number of multi-million dollar social inclusion and economic development initiatives in indigenous Cree communities in Northern Canada and has evaluated dozens of programmes for UN agencies (including UNICEF, UN Women, UNFPA, the IOM, and UNRWA), international financial institutions, and international non-profit organisations.

Job Titles:

• Senior Associate
• Senior Evaluation Specialist

Mariane Arsenault is a Senior Evaluation Specialist with nearly 15 years of experience in development effectiveness supporting UN organisations (UNICEF, UN Women, UNHCR, ILO, ICAO, OCHA); international financial institutions and multi-donor trust funds (World Bank, Caribbean Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank); INGOs (Forum of Federations, International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Disability Rights Fund, Rights and Democracy); bilateral donors (SIDA, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and Global Affairs Canada, OAS, CIDA); and research institutions (Canadian International Development Research Council, Humber Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning). With a strong academic background in evaluation, Mariane regularly designs advanced analytical tools and leads complex quantitative and qualitative analysis for both development and humanitarian programming. For instance, she recently led the Evaluation of UNHCR's Global Fleet Management, drawing on extensive quantitative data to develop a multi-scenario cost-benefit analysis. She also has extensive experience designing complex theories of change for diverse programming and has conducted a number of global organisational assessments, including the Multilateral Organisation Performance Assessment Network (MOPAN) Common Assessment. Mariane holds vast sectoral expertise in children's rights, child protection, gender equality, migration, human rights, and humanitarian intervention and regularly brings this sectoral knowledge together through assignments such as recent evaluations of the UNDAF in Cambodia and UNDAP in Rwanda. She has designed and led a number of large-scale complex meta-analyses, including for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and Global Affairs Canada, where she assessed the quality of evaluation reports as well as the development effectiveness of both organisations by reviewing and assessing over 120 evaluation reports. She also led an extensive meta-analysis review of the Rockefeller Foundation Grants Portfolio. Mariane was the Lead Technical Reviewer for the UNICEF Global Evaluation Reports Oversight System (GEROS) in 2015, where she led the technical review team and provided quality assurance for all GEROS reviews of final evaluation reports. From 2014 - 2018, she was the Team Leader for the UNICEF Quality Assurance Facility for the Review of Evaluation and Research Deliverables for 5 UNICEF Regional Offices (also known as the GEROS regional help-desks), supporting the quality assurance of UNICEF evaluation terms of reference (ToRs), inception reports, and draft reports. Mariane has also supported UNICEF through a number of other evaluation initiatives, including leading an Evaluability Assessment for the UNICEF Thailand Country Office, the Final Evaluation of the Retorno de la Alegría Programme in Honduras, an Evaluability Assessment of UNICEF Nigeria Training Investments, an Evaluability Assessment for the UNICEF Angola Country Programme, and the Mid-Term Evaluation of the UNICEF Mali Country Programme.

Job Titles:

• Senior Associate

Ramsés has more than fifteen years of experience as a data scientist and has performed advanced quantitative and statistical analyses for international organizations (i.e., UNICEF, UNHCR, UN Women, IDRC) and for multibillion-dollar companies such as Cogeco Connection, Pratt & Whitney, ExxonMobil, BHP Billiton, Glencore, and Nestle. He possesses advanced knowledge of quantitative programs and software such as Excel, SQL developer, SAP, and Oracle Business Intelligence, through which he has produced live dashboards used to monitor key performance indicators and report in real-time to senior management. He also has strong expertise conducting time-series analysis and regression, applying trend and seasonality models to provide weekly and monthly forecasts used for operational decision-making.

Job Titles:

• Senior Associate

Rashmi Agrawal is a Senior Evaluator with over 30 years of experiencing in evaluation, specializing in rural development and education & training. With very strong academic credentials (Doctorate in Psychology, Post-Graduate Diploma in Education and Vocational Guidance, Post Graduate Diploma in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations, and a graduate of the International Program on Development Evaluation and Training (IPDET)), Rashmi has a strong mix of theoretical and practical expertise that she uses to evaluate complex and often irregular objects of evaluation (including impact assessments). Ms. Agrawal is heavily engaged in the evaluation community in India. She is a member of the High-Power Advisory Committee on Monitoring and Evaluation for the Ministry of Rural Development within the Government of India; launched the Evaluation Community of India (ECOI); is a founding member and a member of the Steering Committee for the Community of Evaluators of South Asia; was the chair-person of the sub-group of International Development Association (IDEAS) Working Group on Evaluation Competencies; is a member of Evalgender+team; and regularly organizes evaluation events in India to celebrate occasions such as the International Evaluation Year and EvalWeek. Rashmi's heavy engagement with the evaluation community provides opportunities to be introduced to emerging evaluation techniques and designs and innovative approaches to evaluation. Since 2015, Rashmi has provided annual support to UNICEF GEROS as a Senior Technical Reviewer and has personally assessed over 50 UNICEF final evaluation reports.

Job Titles:

• Senior Associate

With a strong academic and theoretical base, (M.A. in Evaluation, 2013 and M.A. in Non-Profits Management, 2005) Sara Vaca has been providing results based management support for 18 years. She has extensive experience supporting programmes led by both UN organisations (UNICEF, UNFPA, UN Women, WFP) and NGOs (Red Cross Movement, World Vision, International Medical Corps, Plan, among others) in areas related to gender equity, child protection, health, HIV/AIDS, economic security, human rights, and humanitarian programming. Over the years, Ms. Vaca has conducted, often as lead, more than 20 evaluations over multiple continents (countries worked in include: Albania, Burkina Faso, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinee, Indonesia, Iraq, Malawi, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, South Sudan, Switzerland, Togo, Tunisia, and Ukraine) in areas ranging from women's empowerment to cash transfers to disaster responses. She has evaluated programmes and scaling-up interventions in diverse sectors such as sexual and reproductive health, economic security, gender equity, women empowerment, gender-based violence and peace building. She has a deep knowledge of UNICEF's country programmes and areas, as she led the development of the 25 Theories of Change embedded in the UNICEF Indonesia CPD. Sara has been supporting the UNICEF Global Evaluation Reports Oversight System (GEROS) since 2015 and was part of the Impact Ready LLD UNICEF GEROS technical review team from 2015 - 2018. She was the GEROS Technical Review Team Coordinator in 2016 and has GEROS assessed over 50 UNICEF final evaluation reports in English, French, and Spanish. She also assured the quality of UN Women evaluation reports and worked for UNICEF's LACRO as internal evaluation advisor creating a QA system and providing internal quality for ToRs, Inception reports and Draft reports. Sara has strong meta-evaluation experience and has assessed over 120 reports. Ms. Vaca brings top-notch Data Visualization expertise, specialized in conveying evaluation-related concepts using visual elements. She posts regularly new ideas about how to better understand and communicate evaluation visually (www.saravaca.com/dataviz/). Sara is fluent in English, French, and Spanish with an intermediate command of written Portuguese. She has lived in Spain, Malawi, Burkina Faso, France, Switzerland and Taiwan.

Job Titles:

• Senior Associate
• Director of Indeva Consulting

Susanne Turrall has over 20 years of experience working in international development. She has an interdisciplinary technical background of social and economic analysis in international development, with degrees in Social Anthropology and Agricultural Economics. She has hands-on experience in the field, as well as advisory and management experience. She has worked within evaluation for over 12 years including M&E systems design, outcome monitoring, independent evaluations and providing consultancy support to strengthen UN quality assurance systems. She has undertaken evaluations for various clients (including UNICEF, UNFPA, WWF-UK, Oxfam America, Irish Aid) and notably recently co-led the UNFPA and UNICEF Joint Evaluation of the Joint Programme of the Abandonment of Female Genital Mutilation. Susanne was part of the core team of UNICEF Global Evaluation Reports Oversight System (GEROS) technicalreviewers from 2016 - 2019. Beyond reviewing, she has also co-written meta-analyses and been involved in strategic reflection and planning workshops. She also has broader experience working within other UN Quality Assurance systems. She is a regular reviewer of Terms of Reference, Inception Reports and Evaluation reports for the World Food Programme's Decentralized Evaluation Quality Assurance System (DEQAS) and was a technical reviewer for UN Women's Global Evaluation Reports Assessment and Analysis System (GERAAS) in English, French, and Spanish. Susanne is also the Director of Indeva Consulting www.indeva-consulting.com

Job Titles:

• Senior Technical Reviewer