Work 

As a trilingual, program manager for organizations and international development projects I have been involved in amazing projects! Here are  highlights of some of the work I have been involved with:

Currently, I lead the design and execution of the END Fund’s data processes. An amazing and mission driven organization focused on ending five neglected tropical diseases. As a growing organization, I work on ensuring we benefit from a sound data foundation that sustains growth and promotes evidence-based decision making. Robust data processes, systems and knowledge capital will allow us to report to donors, measure impact and attract further investments.

Prior to joining the END Fund, I spent six years helping Ministries of Education improve their data collection processes. I had the privilege of doing so by being a part of the OpenEMIS Initiative. This Initiative, envisioned by UNESCO, aims to help countries improve the way they collect, manage, analyze and disseminate their education data in order to have a better understanding of what is taking place in their country and what they can do to improve it. This means moving away from making decisions based on opinions or feelings and relying on data and evidence.

That sounds great, right?  But what exactly did I do to help them achieve this?  Well, as the Project Manager I wore a few hats in this process. Below you will read a description of each "hat".

The following is a breakdown of what took place during the trips, enjoy!

Researcher

I conducted the needs assessment and gap analysis for the inception of the project. What does this mean exactly?

I would travel to the implementing country to map out their data collection processes. We research the data chain, the flow of data and the actors in each step to understand how the decision makers obtain their information and how they use it. In order to do this, we observe how decision makers go about answering questions such as:

1. How many girls and boy are in the education sector?

2. Out of those, how many are in pre-school?

3. How many teachers are teaching? Are they licensed?

4. How many children have been formally diagnosed with a disability? What does this process look like?

I would observe how they went about answering these questions: where they would look for the information? Was an answer possible? How old was the data they were using to calculate the answer?

In many of my trips I saw that most Ministries are working with data that is over a year old. Helping them move to a more effective and timely data collection process is crucial, the end goal being real time data, of course.

The whole process was completed by interviewing actors throughout the data chain from the Minister him/herself to a teacher in a rural school. Through interviews, surveys and in site visits I would get a good understanding of the current context. 

Product Manager 

After completing that report,  I would translate the report into technical requirements for our software engineers. They would then customize the tool  for the country we were working in. I would also be the liaison between the designers, the technical team and the client that ensures the tool and the functionalities are what they were asking for.

Trainer

After the tool was developed and went through a QA process, I would travel back to the project country to conduct a training on the use of the tool. This was the most gratifying part of the job.  Seeing how the tool that you and your team have worked on is used and facilitates the work of those that are using it. For example,  witnessing a teacher at a school use the new tool and feel relieved that he/she no longer has to complete the same administrative processes over and over again and that he/she can use that time to actually be in the classroom. 

Program & Project Manager

As a project manager, sometimes of 6 projects simultaneously, I would develop the project plan, deliverables, KPIs, budgets and monitoring and reporting mechanisms.

So the very long explanation as to what I did in my travel is  so that you have context for the next following section – also many of you have asked, and now you know!

Projects