Fellows

Agha Mohsin Ali has been working in the development sector since 2006 with National & International organizations including NRDP, WWOP, Youth in Action, UNDP, BBSA, CPEA Network and SEHER on different management positions. He earned a Master’s in International Relations from the University of Balochistan, Quetta Pakistan. While working with the National Rural Development Programme (NRDP) Pakistan in Islamabad as Manager, Program Planning and Partnership Development, he led overall fundraising, resource mobilization, program research, planning, and program development processes. During 10 years of experience he implemented, coordinated, and developed partnerships with major donor agencies like USAID, DFID, UK-aid, UNICEF, USAID, CIDA, UNICEF, UNDP, USIP and IOM. Agha has had in-depth experience in child rights, education, and youth empowerment in Pakistan. He worked to protect children from abuse, neglect, and exploitation as well as to provide access to education through establishment of child-friendly spaces and temporary learning centers in flood affected areas. He has provided child protection actors opportunity to interact, share their experiences and avoid any duplication of resources through the CPEA Network and 12 larger projects on education, child rights, democracy and nutrition. Over this period, he has developed skills in monitoring and evaluation, program development, program implementation, proposal writing and resource mobilization. He has also written different articles and blogs on child rights and education in different news sites like ARY Blogs, Hamari Web, Duniya News and The Nations News. Agha also participated in different national and international forums like the World Youth Conference, 2010 in Leon City, Mexico, where he was as a delegate.

Host Organization: Creative Associates International

 Role at Host Organization: Agha will be assisting project staff with the development of an indicator database for a new evaluation project with the ExxonMobil Foundation. This project will be assessing the progress of client grantees in women’s economic empowerment on outcome indicators.

A development professional with more than ten years of experience of working with public and private sector stakeholders particularly in the domain of public-private partnerships, skills development, counseling & placements, technological sophistication, labour market survey, institutional capacity building, and knowledge management for socio-economic development. Currently, working with Louis Berger on USAID Punjab Youth Workforce Development Project as a Lead for Placements, Partnerships, and Institutional Capacity Building. Ansa is providing strategic, technical & policy support, and advice on formulation and execution of capacity development initiatives for empowering vulnerable and marginalized youth; strengthening partnerships with public and private sector stakeholders at all administrative government tiers with an aim of improving accessibility, equity, and relevance of youth development services for sustainable socio-economic development. Previously, worked with GiZ as PPP Advisor and facilitated the Government and public-sector institutions in bridging the disconnect with private sector for demand-driven workforce development. Prior to that, served at Technology Upgradation and Skill Development Company (TUSDEC), a subsidiary of the Ministry of Industries and Production, Government of Pakistan (GoP), for about eight years in multiple capacities, starting from a trainee metamorphosed into a Manager leading a team of four professionals. The sphere of responsibilities included orchestrating proposals and papers for the Government, multi-funding agencies, creating partnerships with bilateral/multilateral groups, corporate sector, and government bodies along with executing image building initiatives. Her educational pursuits involved an MPA from University of Punjab, Pakistan and a BBIT from Lahore College for Women University. The blend of classroom and on-job learning significantly inculcated leadership, cross-functional team work, effective communication skills, problem resolution, and resilience into her personality. She always has a balanced approach towards life, relishes her work as a development professional, and eager to mark herself as social entrepreneur contributing productively towards socio-economic melioration of local communities.

Host Organization: United Way Bay Area

Role of Host Organization: Ansa will enhance UWBA’s business partnerships work through research, data analysis and the creation of a strategic plan. She will work with the Equity Team to assess current activities of the business partnerships team as well as conduct research on best practices across the nation, including feasibility of expansion in the Bay Area and analyze our data.

Ejaz has seven years’ experience of monitoring, evaluation, and research for diverse community development projects. He earned a Master’s degree in Management from IMSciences, Peshawar, Pakistan. He is currently working with the United Nations Development Program in a post-crisis situation in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on enhancing the capacities of justice and security sector institutions with particular focus on gender responsive and community policing on the supply side and access to justice for vulnerable groups including women and children on the demand side of the justice and security chain. In his current capacity, Ejaz develops and implements M&E systems, devises protocols for research and manages teams associated with program and research assignments. He has been instrumental in annual project planning and aligning of interventions with broader sectorial and national goals. He is an expert user of data analysis software’s and analyzes large pool of data for reporting and program and policy decisions. Previously, he worked with a rural development program focusing on pro-poor value chain development and management, climate change adaptation and rural livelihood for indigenous mountain communities in Northern Pakistan. He secured livelihoods for poor small farmers particularly women and produced an experimental evidence base combining capacity building interventions and action research. Ejaz also worked with model legal empowerment of the poor program contributing to methodology design and managing field teams on an innovative impact evaluation combining RCT’s with case tracking and ethnography. Ejaz takes pride in his work and contemplates ways to help his community in securing a better quality of life.

Host Organization: Worldreader

Role at Worldreader: At Worldreader, Ejaz will serve as an Impact & Evaluation (I&E) Fellow, assisting the I&E Department in building and streamlining measurement and evaluation processes. He will develop M&E strategies, conduct data analysis, ensure proper maintenance of data storage systems, and complete special projects.

Fayyaz Yaseen is a development practitioner with four years of experience in the nonprofit sector. He earned his Master’s degree in Economics and completed several professional courses on monitoring and evaluation, learning and accountability, qualitative and quantitative research methods, report and project proposal writing, and project cycle management. In 2012, the IDRC-SDPI awarded Fayyaz a fellowship in governance, security and justice for his M.Phil. in International Development Studies. Throughout his career, he has gained diverse experience by working in remote areas of Pakistan in different fields such as education, health, voice and accountability, women’s participation in political process, violence against women, child labor, and conflict resolution. In September 2012, in Islamabad, Pakistan he was one of the coordinators of the South Asia Economic Summit organized by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI). Fayyaz continued his work on the promotion of good governance in Pakistan with the help of civil society initiatives by establishing nationwide networks of CSOs known as Pakistan Social Accountability Networks (PSAN) to over 125 organizations. These diverse experiences in education, health, women’s participation in political processes, violence against women, child labor and conflict resolution provided him with various skills and competencies; such as project design and management, research tools design, donor liaison and reporting, resource mobilization, monitoring and evaluation and financial management. His hobbies include reading political analyses and reviews and traveling.

Host Organization : The Atlantic Council

Role at Host Organization: Fayyaz will serve as a Research Associate, and will conduct on-the-ground research for an issue brief on U.S.-Pakistan relations in terms of security, public policy, and economic development.

Freeha Ihsan has six years of experience in the nonprofit and education sector. She earned her master’s degree in public administration from Fatima Jinnah Women University in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. To tweak her skills further, Freeha obtained her Master of Science with a specialization in management. She has developed expertise in project management, training and development, education, and economic empowerment. Most of her experience is based on projects specially design for underserved communities of Pakistan. As a Program Officer for the USAID funded education and economic empowerment for women project, she proved herself as a valuable team member because of her effective project management and communication skills. She also worked at the Parliament of Pakistan, on projects funded by the British Council & European Union, and with different universities as an educationist. Freeha has collaborated with diverse people, including elected leaders, bureaucrats, and people from underserved communities. Freeha is enthusiastic to help people, and she is always infatuated with opportunities to go out of her comfort zone.

Host Organization: Women’s World Banking

Role at Host Organization: Freeha will join the Women’s World Banking Strategy & Market Solutions teams. She will deliver solutions for the organization and its network member institutions concerning an array of microfinance initiatives including: credit, savings, youth products, financial education and microinsurance.

Huma has over six years of professional experience in the nonprofit sector, having worked to fight against poverty, hunger and illiteracy in her country. She earned her last degree in Business Administration from the Institute of Management Sciences. Huma has worked as an Assistant Project Coordinator for a UNWFP funded project which provided food assistance to the FATA region of her country. Previously, she worked for a UNODC funded project that helped provide health assistance to drug users in the province’s female prisons. Through her professional career, Huma acquired highly praised leadership, humanitarian-based research and communication skills. Huma also has an unbeatable command over her technical and report preparation skills. Easily commanding cameras and laptops, Huma’s dream is to improve the quality of education in Pakistan by providing employment opportunities to the youth and empowering Pakistani women.

Host Organization: Halcyon

Role in Host Organization: Huma will work alongside the Director to help manage projects including the Halcyon Dialogue, Incubator Intensive and Halcyon’s scoping for international expansion of its social enterprise incubator. She will lead on several components of these programs, maintaining connections with external partners, and representing Halcyon in various scenarios.

Huma specializes in regional trade, trade policy and public sector development. She holds a Bachelors’ degree in Mathematics from the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) minoring in Economics and Philosophy. She has worked as an analyst at the Pakistan Business Council since 2012 contributing to several publications centered on Pakistan’s trade relations with emerging economies in the region, particularly China and India. Her work broadly aims to assess the development or lack thereof in Pakistan’s trade infrastructure in light of the changing political landscape, economic restrictiveness, bilateral and multilateral trade cooperation agreements and policy reforms. Her research identifies key focus areas at industry and government levels for Pakistan to create pathways for a sustainable growth in the mid and long term. She worked closely with the Pakistan Economic Forum to facilitate dialogue amongst policy makers, economic experts and academics on issues of trade, economic stability, energy and education. She is also a coordinator on the Pakistan side for the Pakistan India Joint Business Forum that consists of business leaders on both sides actively involved in the process of trade normalization between the two countries. She assisted the forum in making recommendations to the two governments on mutual opportunities and trade policy matters.

Host Organization: Heritage Foundation

Role at Host Organization: Huma will undertake an independent research project focused on economic freedom and development in the South and South East Asian region closely studying rule of law, governance, regulation and open markets. She will also contribute in developing the next edition of the Index for Economic Freedom published annually by the Heritage Foundation.

Ishaq has over five years of experience in the nonprofit sector, and earned two Master’s of Science degrees in Project Management and Applied Statistics from the University of Management and Technology in Pakistan. He earned a Rector’s Award for scoring four out of four GPA during his MS in Applied Statistics. He earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Statistics from Government College University in Lahore, Pakistan with a Gold Medal for securing first position in the class. While working as a Monitoring and Evaluation Analyst with Chemonics International Inc. in Pakistan under the USAID-funded Punjab Enabling Environment Project for more than two years, he worked to measure the impact of policy interventions made for the economic growth in the Agribusiness sector of Punjab. Ishaq has also worked with USAID funded Pakistan Firms Project implemented by Chemonics International Inc. as Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist for more than two years that focused on accelerating sales and creating jobs in the targeted value chains of Agriculture and Industry sectors. Through these experiences, he developed strong monitoring and evaluation, project management and data analysis skills. Ishaq enjoys focusing on the areas of economic growth, women empowerment and gender equality, and has a strong passion for human and institutional capacity development initiatives.

Host Organization: SEED SPOT

Role at Host Organization: Ishaq will help design, collect, and track SEED SPOT measuring and evaluation work enabling more accurate and up to date data. Working with High Schools and SEED SPOT Communities across the country, he will help develop new modules and curriculum for Schools and Communities programs.