May 2011 marks the fifth anniversary of CGD’s Evaluation Gap Working Group’s final report, “When Will We Ever Learn: Improving Lives Through Impact Evaluation”. In the five years since the report’s launch, working group members have continued to contribute to the field of impact evaluation in many different ways.
Nancy Birdsall is President of the Center for Global Development. Among her many initiatives are new ways to measure the quality of aid (QuoDA) and proposals for aid to pay for results (COD Aid).
François Bourguignon left the World Bank in 2007. He is currently Director of the Paris School of Economics and published "The Impact of Macroeconomic Policies on Poverty and Income Distribution" (with M. Bussolo and L. Pereira) in 2008.
Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT. Esther has received several awards and honors since the Evaluation Gap working group including the 2010 John Bates Clark medal, the first Calvó-Armengol International Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship. She has published a growing list of impact evaluations and other papers and recently co-authored Poor Economics with Abhijit Banerjee.
Paul Gertler, Director of the Institute of Business and Economics Research at the University of California Berkeley, was recently named chair of the board of the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), formed as a result of the Evaluation Gap working group report. He has contributed a growing list of impact evaluations to the literature, including evaluations of cash transfer programs, health insurance, provider payment mechanisms, and anti-poverty programs throughout Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Judith Gueron is an Independent Scholar in Residence and President Emerita at MDRC. She received APPAM’s Peter H. Rossi Award for Contributions to the Theory of Practice of Program Evaluation in 2008.
Indrani Gupta is currently at the Health Policy Research Center Institute for Economic Growth. In 2006, she was named to the Technical Review Panel of the Global Fund, the independent panel of experts that review country proposals for technical merit.
Jean Habicht, Graduate Professor of Epidemiology, Cornell University. In 2008, he co-authored the study, “Assessing supervisory and motivational factors in the context of a program evaluation in rural Haiti” in the Journal of Nutrition.
Dean Jamison is Professor of Global Health and Adjunct Professor Health Services at the University of Washington.
Daniel Kress is currently Deputy Director, Finance and Policy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Patience Kuruneri joined UNICEF’s Health Section in New York from 2007 to 2009 and has returned to the African Development Bank as Principal Health Analyst in the Health Division of the Human Development Department where she is responsible for health sector operations in Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Sierra Leone.
David I. Levine was named Chair of the Economic Analysis and Policy Group at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He has also served as on the Advisory Board of Scientific Evaluation and Global Evaluation in 2005.
Ruth Levine was named Director of Evaluation, Policy Analysis & Learning at USAID in March 2010. In this role, Ruth led the creation of USAID’s Evaluation Policy, launched in January 2011. In March 2011 it was announced that Ruth will be joining the Hewlett Foundation as Director of Global Development and Population Program.
Richard Manning left his position as Chair of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC). He currently is Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Institute of Development Studies. He also Chairs the replenishment process for the Global Fund to Fight Aids TB and Malaria and works on aid transparency initiatives.
Stephen Quick left his post as Director of the Office of Evaluation at the Inter-American Development Bank to join the Millennium Challenge Corporation as the Managing Director of Monitoring and Evaluation.
Blair (Sachs) Hanewall is Senior Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She helped implement the working group recommendation to create 3ie by serving for a time on that organization’s Interim Board.
William Savedoff became a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development in 2010. He helped negotiate the agreements that led to the establishment of 3ie. He publishes a regular Evaluation Gap newsletter for CGD and is working on improving aid effectiveness through new proposals like COD Aid.
Raj Shah was sworn in as the 16th Administrator to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on December 31, 2009. Previous to this appointment, he served as the Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics and as Chief Scientist at the U.S Department of Agriculture.
Smita Singh served on the Interim Board for 3ie and has recently left her position as Special Advisor for Global Affairs and Director at the Hewlett Foundation. She currently serves as a Board Member for CGD.
Miguel Szekely served as Undersecretary of Planning and Evaluation in Mexico’s Social Development Ministry and later as Undersecretary for Upper Secondary Education in Mexico. In both positions, he encouraged the use of impact evaluation in policymaking. He currently is the Director of the Institute for Innovation in Education at the Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico. In April 2011, he published a CGD working paper, Towards Results-based Social Policy Design and Implementation.
Cesar Victora is Professor of Epidemiology, Universidade Federal de Pelotas. He has continued to publish studies on the impact of health interventions and is the president-elect of the International Epidemiological Association.
Jessica Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the Political Science Department at Stanford University. She is currently studying local governments in Mali to test whether a new type of information intervention works to improve accountability in local governance
Two people who were active in the regional consultations and have prominent roles in evaluation today:
Eduardo Amadeo was elected to serve as a national deputy in the Argentine Congress and introduced legislation in October 2011 to create an independent agency in Argentina for evaluating public programs. He is also President of the Observatorio Social.
Gonzalo Hernández Licona has been Executive Secretary for Mexico’s Consejo Nacional de Evaluación (CONEVAL) since 2005. He also serves as a member of the Board of Commissioners for 3ie.