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.

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.

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.

Mahak has five years of experience in engaging talent for sustainable organizational performance through capacity building initiatives focused on women and youth empowerment for energy and financial sector of Pakistan. She earned her Bachelor of Business Administration from the National University of Computers and Emerging Sciences, Islamabad. At USAID-Training for Pakistan Project, she worked on capacity building needs assessments to highlight technical areas which will contribute towards new global practices, challenges and developmental needs in line with Pakistan’s regional pacts. She successfully initiated and implemented 18 training programs focusing on financial management, cyber security, leadership and communication to achieve international best practices for sustainable organizational development. She has worked closely with young leaders from energy and financial sectors to enhance their capacities in areas promoting innovation to help strengthen long-term results. During the implementation of training programs, she also facilitated successful implementation of two courses by USACE for climate and water experts resulting in introduction of new simulation tools for effective management of the overall Indus River Basin. She also worked with ITCILO in organizing a Works Procurement Management course based on Pakistani needs which was later introduced as a regular course at Pakistan Audit and Accounts Academy, Lahore. Previously in 2013, she implemented a nation-wide USAID-Energy Internship Program for youth belonging from underdeveloped areas of Pakistan and it successfully increased women participation from 2% to 9% at Thermal and Hydro Power Plants of Pakistan. The program helped her draft the Gender Strategy for ministries of Pakistan; strategy detailed inclusion of more women in the energy sector in technical areas. She has been voluntarily working with a postpartum self-help group for endorsing mother-child health awareness campaign. All these experiences have developed her working knowledge in program development and implementation, stakeholder liaison and strategic planning for effective project management

Host Organization: Teach For All

Role at Host Organization: Mahak will play a key role in helping build an influential network of champions for the MENA region (Middle East, North Africa) and provide critical behind the scenes support to early stage entrepreneurs seeking to join the Teach For All network.

Mahwish Javaid is a women entrepreneur, and an aspiring lawyer. She has six years of experience in nonprofit sector, and earned a Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) in Reproductive Physiology from Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. Mahwish studied effects of hormonal contraceptives and stress on reproductive health of women in Pakistan for her thesis. She joined UN Women in March 2014, as Project Officer; specifically, she worked on Gender Training and Capacity Building under the Women Economic Empowerment (WEE) program funded by United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security (UNTFHS), in Sindh. Along with the International Labour Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, she helped to improve livelihoods of 2500 landless peasant women and 2000 informal women workers by enhancing access to social security services, food security, land tenancy agreements, and income generating opportunities. She supervised activities for disaster risk reduction, sanitation, and onsite trainings for gender mainstreaming, numeric literacy among women, and first aid in 120 villages. Her job profile encapsulated skills of project coordination, policy advocacy, women’s entrepreneurship, and capacity building to realize the goals of the program. Mahwish has been winner of national essay writing competition, and debate competitions and has also held leadership positions in the Scientific Academic Society, Quaidian Intellectual Forum, and Literary and Debating Society, respectively, in her university. She hopes not only to be a skilled social entrepreneur herself, but also to develop a successful model which can be replicated at macro-scale.

Host Organization: Concern Worldwide

Role at Host Organization: Mahwish will utilize her background in business, entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship by supporting efforts of the Innovations team to sustain and expand programs with a specific focus on the Maker Hub for Maternal and Newborn Health in Nairobi, Kenya.

Maryem has 5 years of experience in the development sector and earned a master’s degree in business administration from Bahria University in Islamabad, Pakistan. Maryem’s association with the development sector has been diverse both in terms of thematic and functional areas. While working as a program officer in USAID’s Small Grants and Ambassador Fund Program, she provided assistance to the grassroots level organization in designing initiatives in education, health, economic development, entrepreneurship, disaster, women’s issues, culture, and the environment. As the regional manager at a consultancy firm, she helped with research and monitoring and evaluation. She also carried out institutional assessments and conducted capacity building exercises for DFID, EU, World Bank, UNDP, UNICEF and USAID funded projects. Through these experiences, she developed strong project coordination and implementation skills. Maryem enjoys focusing on the topics of economic empowerment and social entrepreneurship and has a strong passion for women’s empowerment.

Host Organization: Global Communities

Role at Host Organization: Maryem will provide support to Global Communities’ economic development portfolio with a particular focus on entrepreneurship, enterprise development including cooperative development, access to finance, workforce development and private sector partnerships. She will develop specific technical products and tools, including programming frameworks/models for business advisory services and workforce development; cooperative enterprise development tools; and research briefs.

Sadia is a development practitioner with demonstrated skills in social and academic research. She has over five years of experience in the non-profit sector where she worked with micro-finance institute, nonprofit organisations and consultancy firms. Based on her extensive role as a team leader and social influencer, she became a Chevening Alumna (2016-17) and attained master’s degree in Social Research Methods (Social Policy) from Durham University, United Kingdom. Her degree has equipped her with an in-depth understanding of\nSocial Research which covered range of approaches to research- not only in terms of the techniques and methods used in social research, but also in terms of the theoretical underpinning of research. Throughout her career, Sadia has passionately worked for socio-economic development of her country where she addressed the issues pertaining to social policy areas such as gender inequality, poverty, education, healthcare, and unequal economic opportunities. In her efforts to address these issues she worked extensively at various positions to empower women through education and entrepreneurship in Pakistan so as to eradicate poverty and inequalities from the society. Through these\nexperiences, Sadia has developed strong social research, project management (including, project planning and implementation) policy development, and policy related evaluation research skills which helped her to investigate and highlight social issues and device programme implementation and action plans to address them.

Host Organization: Kiva

Role at Kiva: At Kiva, Sadia will help us significantly improve the breadth and depth of our research reviews, which form the basis of Kiva’s impact measurement system. This will involve not only expanding the set of studies we use, but significantly improving the way we communicate their results and our methodology.