Fellows

Ahmed Hassoon, a public health consultant, with more than seven years of experience serving vulnerable groups at different capacity for multiple sectors in Iraq. Ahmed earned a degree in General Medicine and Surgery from Baghdad School of Medicine in Iraq. He studied International Health & Development at Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in the United States and is an internationally certified Project Manager (PMP) by the Project Management Institute. His certifications include: Disaster Planning, Global Development & Social Justice, International Development, Monitoring and Evaluation from Tulane University, Emory University, the United State Government, and USAID, respectively. While working at the Iraqi Ministry of Health and several major international organizations, he helped during the conflict and post conflict transition after the 2003 war by focusing on health services for war victims, internally displaced persons,, returnees, women, and children. Ahmed currently works for International Relief and Development as a Health Consultant. He also worked as the Iraq Operations Manager for International Rescue Committee, Capacity Building Coordinator for the Iraqi Ministry of Health, IDP’s Clinic Manager for INTERSOS, and Foundation House Officer for the Iraqi Ministry of Health in several Iraqi Hospitals. Through his field work and education, Ahmed developed a wide experience in public health program design, proposal writing, project management, operations, coordination, business development, and grant management. Ahmed has been awarded the prestigious Hubert Humphrey Fellowship (2010) by the United States Department of State for his dedication to public service in Iraq. Ahmed is fluent in English and Arabic.

Host Organization: International Relief and Development

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.

Abrefa has three years of professional experience and 12 years voluntary experience in the nonprofit sector, and earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Cape Coast in Ghana. While working as a Monitoring and Evaluation officer with SABRE Trust in Ghana under the DFID and Comic Relief-funded FTTT program, he helped improve the educational outcomes for early primary school children in some selected districts of the Western and Central region of Ghana. Abrefa is the Co-Founder Director of a community-based youth-led organization called Young Achievers Caucus and has since 2012 contributed his effort immensely to help improve the standard of living of children living in deprived communities through community outreach programs, with the main aim of providing sexual and reproductive health education to the youth to help curb the menace of teen pregnancy. Additionally, he runs an initiative (Adolescent Sexual Health Initiative) that focuses on helping teenagers in communities to better understand their sexuality and make informed choices to leave safe, healthy and productive lives. Through these experiences, he has acquired skills in monitoring and evaluation, managing project data and other administrative duties. Abrefa through volunteering and as a co-founder has acquired strong project planning, coordination and implementation skills especially at the grassroots level. Abrefa has a strong passion for community and child development.

Host Organization : World Reader

Role at Host Organization : Abrefa will be responsible for developing monitoring tools, such as surveys, reading assessments and electronic data collection templates; data analysis and visualization; reviewing, editing and providing guidelines for the collection impact stories and lessons learned from the field. He will also ensure that data storage systems, records and files are setup and support training for staff, enumerators and partners as required on data collection and monitoring as required; and support internal & external communication of lessons learnt and best practices.

Foluke has 12 years of experience in the nonprofit sector. My passion is in ending inequality and promoting equity for health, development and socio-economic indices. Foluke enjoys working for poverty reduction and social inclusion, sustainable development and systems strengthening through innovation. She believes there is an opportunity now to end inequality, socio-economic and health inequities that have affected development in Africa and looks forward to this change. Foluke has a Masters in Public Health from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, her experience working with Management Sciences for Health focused on improving the health of rural dwellers living with HIV/AIDS in northern Nigeria. Foluke has volunteered as a peer educator on adolescent reproductive health for several groups, including UNICEF and the Center for HIV/AIDS in Nigeria. She currently works with UNICEF as a social policy officer in the field office covering six states in south west Nigeria.

Host Organization : Population Action International (PAI)

Role at Host Organization : At my host organization, I served specifically as liaison for Nigerian grantee CSOs within the “Integration Partnership project”- a multi country grant with recipients in six African countries. I worked on the Policy Impact Project assessing the impact of donor funding for sexual&reproductive health in Malawi, traveled to Lilongwe, Zomba and Balantyre to implement the project, developed policy briefs and fact sheets for advocacy; Represented PAI as panelist at the 44th Commission on Population and Development at the UN headquarters 2012.  

Issam has three years of experience in the nonprofit sector and earned a Master’s of Science in Big Data & Knowledge Management from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. While working as the Community Engagement & Innovation Officer with UCAS Technology Incubator (UCASTI) in Gaza, he improved external engagement between UCASTI and the entrepreneurial ecosystem. He planned and executed three initiatives that targeted enrolled and graduated entrepreneurs, ICT graduates and companies, and girls & women respectively. Previously, Issam designed and implemented an incubation model which recruited over ninety startups, led them through an incubation pipeline of pre-design challenges, that resulted in nine successful startups. Before that, he was an IT Project Manager and led a broad range of web, mobile, machine learning, and data warehouse solutions. Issam utilizes highly attuned analytical skills to develop IT and business strategies and employs cutting-edge technologies to increase productivity. He has volunteered as speaker, mentor, and organizer for several technology initiatives like Google Developer Group and Facebook Developer Circle. He was also an organizer for the first Gazan education startup and AI/Big Data community driver. Issam enjoys focusing on the topics of business and social entrepreneurship, new technologies such AI, Blockchain and Big Data, and has a strong passion for youth empowerment.

Host Organization: Hatch

Role at Host Organization: Issam will support on all parts of the Hatch stack and will suggest ways to scale and improve the product. Issam’s role will be on designing APIs, data modeling, and developing infrastructure to collect and report data.

Janice has five years of experience in the nonprofit, media, and governmental sectors, and earned a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Stella Maris Polytechnic in Liberia. While studying for her college degree, she volunteered with Population Services International as a Youth Coordinator where she managed a radio show on sexual reproductive health, and planned outreach activities for young people. Janice has developed youth related brochures and IECs materials for several groups including UNICEF and UNAIDS. Her advocacy has progressed to include programs in girls’ rights, youth and gender empowerment, and poverty reduction. Through these experiences, she developed strong research, leadership, and report writing skills. Janice enjoys focusing on the topics of economic reform and population need. She has a strong passion for creative arts and hopes to one day use it as a unifying tool for social justice.

Host Organization: Worldwatch Institute

Fellow’s Role at Worldwatch Institute
Janice will serve as Research Assistant to the President. In this position she will be primarily responsible for assisting in research by the President in three areas of substance: Gender, reproductive health and population, Sustainable agriculture and food production and Climate change and sustainable energy for all. Additionally she will aid various Worldwatch teams seeking to: Improve our outreach on research results for optimum impact in our mission of promoting a rapid transition to sustainable societies that meet human needs Develop and expand networks of likeminded organizations around the world.

Jillani has an extensive eight years of experience in the development sector in Pakistan. He earned a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. He has excellent skills and competencies in the areas of project management, administration, logistics control, and monitoring & evaluation. Being a development practitioner, Jillani has undertaken several projects related to community development, public health, youth development, sexual reproductive health and rights, community health centers, and women’s empowerment. He is an active team player and proactively supports and facilitates teamwork in his daily life.

Host Organization: Venture Philanthropy Partners

Role at Venture Philanthropy PartnersAt Venture Philanthropy Partners, Jillani will serve as an Operations Analyst Fellow; designing and executing program management processes for both specific projects and for organization wide activities, along with ensuring organizational priorities and associated activities are moving by playing an integral role in monitoring work across the organization.

Margaret is a 33 years old Zambian female citizen born in Kitwe, Zambia. She has 11 years of experience in the nonprofit sector. 3 years of volunteerism and 8 years different positions of full time contracts. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Development Studies from Zambian Open University, Post-graduate Diploma in Monitoring and Evaluation from Cavendish University-Zambia and Diploma in Social Work both from University of Zambia. Margaret works as a Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning officer for the USAID funded Zambia Community HIV Prevention Project (Z-CHPP)/DREAMS Initiative based in Choma, Southern Province of Zambia. She supports the organization in ensuring a functional monitoring and evaluation systems. Her main responsibilities are; to ensure data is collected from service delivery points, analyzed and reported according to organizational and donor requirements, data quality audits, identifying success stories for organizational learning. From August 2014 to November 2016 she worked for Women and Law in Southern Africa – Zambia as Monitoring and Evaluation Officer in Lusaka province. She contributed to Women and Law in Southern Zambia’s mission to contribute to socio-economic, political and legal advancement for women. Achieved through a collaborative, strategic action oriented research in the social and legal field; lobbying for legal reform and policy, changes on laws and practices which discriminate and disadvantage women and children. Her responsibilities were to assist programs with planning, manage programs information systems, conduct reviews of performance against targets, identifying and addressing implementation challenges, documenting lessons learned and most-significant success stories lastly oversee the entire organisational Monitoring and Evaluation system and participate in baseline studies. Margaret has acquired skills in activity scheduling and tracking, design and implementation of project monitoring and evaluation plans and Reproductive and Sexual health. Margaret is passionate about women and children’s rights, Gender, HIV/AIDS and Disability issues.

Host Organization: RestoreNYC

Role at Host Organization: Working as an Impact Manager, Margaret will lead Restore’s team in its outcomes model and tracking across client services, housing, and economic empowerment programs. She will refine Restore’s impact infrastructure including manuals and processes, ensure effective implementation of impact activities, and analyze data and communicate results of findings to diverse stakeholders.