Experience

Higher Education Strategy Associates

• Canada
• Higher Education
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Vice President

  • Mar 2022 - Present

• Research Manager

  • Jan 2022 - Present



Mastercard Foundation

• Canada
• Non-profit Organization Management
• 500 - 600 Employee

• Senior Manager, Research, Evaluation and Learning

  • Mar 2015 - Jan 2020

  • Led research, evaluation and learning activities for the Mastercard Foundation’s $800M+ youth education grants portfolio, focused on secondary and university education and employment training programs.• Through co-design, training, mentorship and support activities, equipped Foundation staff and program implementers with tools and processes to learn from their programs.• Co-designed and managed innovative multi-year “learning partnerships” to promote real-time collaborative learning for program monitoring, continuous quality improvement, strategy development, and broader dissemination of lessons learned. • Produced a wide range of knowledge products to serve the needs of diverse audiences including Foundation Board of Directors and executives, communications teams, program implementers and external audiences. • Introduced state-of-the-art approaches to youth-centered, utilization-focused evaluation and learning. Built consensus for a shift in organizational culture toward ongoing, real-time learning. Contributed to the development of an evaluation policy and guidelines, ethics review principles and processes. Piloted use of indigenous evaluation methods in an education program for indigenous youth.

• Manager, Research, Evaluation and Learning

  • Mar 2013 - Mar 2015

  • Led research, evaluation and learning for the US$700M Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, to support education and leadership development of 35k+ young people, through 25 universities and NGOs. • Co-designed and managed a rigorous, large scale, five-year impact evaluation. Used diplomacy and problem-solving to build partner buy-in and overcome data access challenges.• Guided development of real-time collaborative learning mechanisms to inform ongoing program design and build support for long-term learning goals. Learning informed key program decisions including design of approach to leadership development, wellness support for youth program participants, and career transition support services.• Built and managed an overarching approach to 20+ mid-term and final program evaluations over 5+ years, ensuring that evaluations responded to each program partner’s needs while aggregating to produce a coherent knowledge base that guided the Foundation’s decision-making.• Designed, commissioned and co-managed research to learn from the experiences of other African-centered scholarship programs. Research findings influenced the Foundation’s approach to enabling scholarship recipients to return to Africa following studies abroad.• Co-designed, contracted and oversaw implementation of an education management information system with participant demographics used for internal and Board reporting, aggregating and organizing disparate and incomplete data from 25 program partners.



Dignitas International

• Canada
• Hospitals and Health Care
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Associate Director, Research and Knowledge Translation

  • 2010 - 2012

  • Reported directly to the CEO and to the Board of Directors Research Advisory Committee. Responsible for building and managing the research program of Dignitas – which provided frontline HIV/TB services and health systems strengthening in rural Malawi - in line with organizational vision and mission. • Led the expansion of the research program from no institutional funding and two publications, to $2.6M+ of grants and 24 peer-reviewed publications by end-2012. • Provided supportive supervision for a team of two support staff and nine core research scientists based in Toronto, Vancouver, Malawi, the U.K., South Africa, and Australia. • Oversaw revolving portfolio of over 12 Malawi-based public health research projects with different funders, collaborators, ethics boards and study designs. Ensured compliance with ethical protocols, maintained project knowledge management systems, and oversaw reporting to funders.• Lead writer for program grants including a $4.6M USAID grant and a $1M CIDA grant. Quality control and authorship contributions on all proposals, communications and fundraising collateral. • Chaired the Board and staff Research Advisory Committee and Ethics Committee, collaboratively developing the agenda and guiding the committees’ decision-making processes.

• Research Program Manager

  • 2005 - 2010



St. Michael's Hospital

• Canada
• Hospitals and Health Care
• 700 & Above Employee

• Research Coordinator, Centre for Global Health Research

  • 2002 - 2004



University of Toronto

• Canada
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• Teaching Assistant, Research Fellow

  • 1996 - 2001