ASPECT experts and moderators

Annalies Borrel has 30 years of work experience in Africa, Balkans, Europe, Middle East and south Asia, and has held senior leadership positions with different UN agencies, donors, Red Cross, Governments, NGOs and academia working in countries affected by fragility, crises and development. Annalies is a former faculty member of Tufts University and has held senior advisory positions with the Governments of Afghanistan and Zimbabwe. She is currently a Senior Adviser for Nutrition and Social Protection with the Nutrition and Child Development team at UNICEF. She is a citizen of eSwatini and currently lives in Geneva, Switzerland with her three sons. 

Chloë Fernandez is a Research Officer in the Gender, Economic Opportunity & Fragility unit at the Development Impact Department (DIME) of the World Bank. Her objective is to bridge the gap between 
evidence and effective policies and operations in the most challenging contexts. She works in high-pressure environments with a focus on social protection interventions for vulnerable populations. Beyond project-specific work across the Sahel and DRC, she also co-leads DIME’s Fragility, Conflict, and Violence Program, 
providing intellectual and operational directions to World Bank programming. Growing up riding horses in France, Chloë has since taken up a weird hobby in running, like most expats lost in DC. 

Clare O'Brien is WFP's senior adviser in social protection. She has been supporting the design and implementation of social protection and other social sector programmes for 20 years and has contributed extensively to research in the field. Clare joined WFP in 2018, since when she has been providing strategic 
advice across the organization, and she guided the development of WFP's social protection strategy which was launched in 2021. She is currently leading a research piece on the value of using social protection in disaster response. Before joining WFP Clare worked at Oxford Policy Management, where she led the 3-
year DFID-funded research project on Shock-Responsive Social Protection Systems.

David Gordon is Professor of Social Justice and the Director of the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research and the Bristol Poverty Institute at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom. It’s 
experience with UN and UNICEF spans several decades. He worked with UNICEF on its first ever Global Study on Child Poverty and Disparities, providing scientific advice and support to over 50 UNICEF country offices. In 2018, the European Union adopted its first measures of child deprivation based upon the work of Professor Gordon and his colleagues. In 2006 and 2007, he was given the tremendous honour of addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations about child and youth poverty. In 2018, he had the honour of being elected as a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) for his work on poverty research.

Emile Boral-Rolland is a Data & Policy Analyst in Crises and Fragility at the OECD where he leads the data analysis side of the OECD’s States of Fragility report and produces data driven analysis on economic and financial issues in fragile contexts. He previously worked on governance for development at the OECD, and 
in a range of roles in Nairobi (Kenya) including acting as a project manager for Altai Consulting's monitoring and learning system for the European Union's Emergency Trust Fund for stability and addressing root causes of irregular migration and displaced persons in the Horn of Africa. Outside of work, he enjoys going hiking and has recently started learning to dance Lindy Hop.

Enrique Delamónica is the UNICEF Statistics and Monitoring Senior Adviser for Child Poverty and Gender Equality, was Social and Economic Policy Regional Advisor for Latin America and the Caribbean and Chief of Social Policy and Gender Equality in Nigeria. 

Francesco Iacoella is an Impact Evaluation Analyst at UNICEF Evaluation Office. He has worked as an evaluator his whole career, focusing mostly on evaluating impact in humanitarian and fragile settings in Sub-Saharan Africa. He holds a PhD in Development Economics from the United Nations University MERIT in the Netherlands. While not working, Francesco likes to explore his surroundings and understand as much as possible the community he is in, which is a titanic endeavor in New York City.

Frank Otchere is a Social Policy Manager at the UNICEF Office of Research at Innocenti, where he has been leading research on the impact of social protection programmes on household and children’s wellbeing, as well as social protection systems. He holds a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and previously worked as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), a leading think tank based at the University of Ghana.

Gustavo Angeles Tagliaferro is the Chief, Social Policy & Economic Analysis at UNICEF-Innocenti Global Office of Research and Foresight. He has led multiple impact evaluations of social protection programmes through his work in the Transfer Project and at Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health. Before joining UNICEF, he was Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the School of Public Health and the department of public policy. Over 10 years he led the impact evaluation and capacity building portfolios of MEASURE Evaluation, a large evaluation project of USAID’s Bureau of Global Health. Outside work he learns Italian cooking, enjoys trekking and plans to go back to the camino de Santiago. 

James Manley is a professor in the Economics Department at Towson University in Maryland focusing on 
assessing the impact of environmental stimuli and social protection programs on human health. His best-known work involves the meta-analysis of social protection programs' effects on child health. When not gathering data, he enjoys listening to bands on the border between punk and pop in a variety of languages including Die Toten Hosen (German), Zen Circus (Italian), and the Analogs (Polish), although he wants to clarify that he does not speak all these languages!

Jenn Yablonski is the Chief of Child Poverty and Social Protection, within the Social Policy and Social Protection Programme Group in New York. Over a 25-year career in international development, she has worked on issues of social inclusion, inequality and economic justice. She brings applied knowledge of poverty and economic analysis, and extensive experience working on social protection systems and programmes in developing countries, including in fragile and humanitarian contexts. Her work has also included leading and managing multi-stakeholder initiatives at the nexus of research and policy, for example as a founding member of the Transfer Project and as a partner in the Young Lives Project.

Jennifer Waidler works as an Impact Evaluation Officer in WFP, where she manages a portfolio of impact evaluations on resilience and climate change. Before that, she spent four years at the UNICEF Office of Research and Foresight – Innocenti, where she led social protection research, including impact evaluations of cash transfers and cash plus programmes. She holds a PhD in Economics and Governance from Maastricht University and UNU-MERIT. In her free time, she likes to watch football and play tennis.

John Hoddinott is the H.E. Babcock Professor of Food & Nutrition Economics and Policy at Cornell University. He has led or participated in the evaluations of some of the largest social protection and adaptive social protection programs in the world, including the Vulnerable Group Development scheme in Bangladesh, 
Brazil’s Bolsa Familia cash transfer program, Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme, PROGRESA in Mexico and South Africa’s Child Support Grant. John was born in Canada and, in his spare time, continues to play ice hockey.

Katja Hilser academic and professional career concentrated around the study of social protection initiatives and cash transfers. She holds a PhD focused on economic and sustainable development in Southern Africa and has spent the last decade as an independent consultant and evaluation expert in the field of social 
protection, migration, resilience, transitional development assistance, social cohesion and health, before she joined GIZ in February 2024. Outside of work, she likes to spend her time cooking for her friends and family, gardening, reading a good book or hiking.

Leonie Prely has spent the last 10 years abroad, in Tunisia, Chad and other African countries, as a development practitioner working for GIZ and the French Foreign ministry. After a master’s in international 
Affairs and International Security, she specialized in Evaluation of Resilience and Rural development projects. She currently works at GIZ as an Evaluation and Evidence expert for the BMZ Transitional 
Development Assistance Unit. Outside of work, the outdoors is where she feels best, hiking, riding a bike, or windsurfing.

Miguel Almanzar is an Evaluation Specialist at UNICEF HQ where he focuses on impact evaluation and methods. An Economist with over 12 years of experience conducting impact evaluations of agricultural, social protection, and nutrition. Previously he worked at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) where he was a principal investigator on impact evaluations looking at the effects of agricultural extension, ICTs, WASH, electricity and road infrastructure on economic well-being, productivity and food security. He holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics and Rural Development from the Georg-August 
University of Göttingen. On his free time, he enjoys sharing yoga and mindfulness practices with his community.

Nicholas Mathers is a social policy specialist with fifteen years of experience in research, policy, and programme management including with UNICEF, ODI and Save the Children in both development and 
humanitarian contexts. With UNICEF Nepal he led the expansion of the government cash transfers in response to the 2015 earthquakes. Since then, he has developed operational guidance for social protection in humanitarian action and researched on the evolution of social protection systems in fragile contexts, effective governance and financing for adaptive social protection, and leveraging climate finance for social protection. He currently loves playing football - something he came to later in life and hopes his body holds out for another few years of fun on the pitch.

Nupur Kukrety is a Social Policy Specialist with UNICEF and leads UNICEF’s global work on Social Protection in humanitarian and fragile contexts. In her professional career spanning more than 20 years, she has worked in a range of contexts designing humanitarian and social development policies, strategies, programmes and their implementation. Prior to joining UNICEF, Nupur has worked with World Food  Programme as the Senior Social Protection Advisor in OMC Regional Bureau and as a specialist with Oxfam and Save the Children on social protection and food security issues covering East & South Asia, Middle East, Central Asia and East & West Africa.

Nyasha Tirivayi is a Social Policy Manager at UNICEF Innocenti-Global Office of Research and Foresight. She leads and manages social protection research, particularly research on the design, implementation and wide-ranging impacts of social protection programmes in all settings. This includes research on the impacts of pre-existing and adaptive social protection programmes on the resilience of children and families to climate shocks. She has published widely in journal articles and books, particularly in development economics, social protection and global health. Before joining UNICEF, she worked for the United Nations 
University (UNU-MERIT) as a research specialist and for FAO as a social protection specialist. Nyasha holds a PhD in Public Policy. Outside of work she enjoys reading and learning about world history and likes to Netflix and chill! 

Oliver Fiala is a Senior Research Adviser at Save the Children UK, leading the Research & Data Hub within the Global Policy, Advocacy and Research Department. His work covers a wide range of thematic areas, with a particular focus on child poverty and fiscal equity. He also oversees the development of the Child Atlas, Save the Children’s data platform to visualize child outcomes globally. Oliver holds a PhD in Economics. Outside of work, Oliver and his wife like to create vintage murder mystery games which fit in an envelope and can be played at home

Patrick Premand is a Senior Economist in the Development Impact Department (DIME) in the research Vice-Presidency at the World Bank. He works on Social Protection and Safety Nets; Jobs, Economic Inclusion and Entrepreneurship; and Early Childhood Development. He conducts impact evaluations and policy experiments of social protection, jobs and human development programs. He often works on government-led interventions implemented at scale, in close collaboration with policymakers and researchers.

Paul Harvey is a partner with Humanitarian Outcomes and has worked for the last 20 years on humanitarian research. Much of that work has looked at the role of cash in humanitarian responses and its links with social protection in crises. Currently, he’s the co-director of BASIC research, an FCDO funded, IDS led programme looking at social assistance in crises. Outside of work, he is still a keen hockey player, albeit on increasingly wonky knees.

Qundeel Khattak, as the Senior Research Advisor for Humanitarian Cash & Voucher Assistance, leads the design, implementation, and application of Save the Children’s Global CVA Learning Agenda. Prior to taking on this role two years ago, Qundeel supported multi-sectoral emergency cash programs in Afghanistan, Yemen, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela for five years as a Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning (MEAL) Advisor. In her free time, Qundeel enjoys playing with her two cats and hiking the great outdoors of California.

Rachel Sabates-Wheeler is a Development Economist with extensive experience in rural development, migration and social protection. A Research Fellow at the IDS since 2001 and a Director of the Centre for Social Protection, Rachel’s geographic research focus has been Eastern and Southern Africa; more recently working in conflict-affected countries. She has led a number of large-scale surveys and studies that explore understandings of risk and vulnerability both conceptually and empirically and has published numerous articles and books on these topics. She is currently an Executive Director of a large FCDO-funded research grant on Better Assistance in Crises (BASIC).

Simon Levine has worked on livelihoods in crises for over 30 years, working at the nexus of humanitarian assistance and longer-term support for all of that time. He began working on shock responsive social protection a decade ago, after joining ODI as a researcher. He has since conducted several studies on the role – and limitations – of social protection assistance in fragile and conflict affected countries and for displaced populations, the potential or deepening the linkages between humanitarian assistance and social protection and has developed guidelines for monitoring and evaluation. When not focusing on building evidence for aid actors, Simon likes to explore the world through food, and to recreate those real and virtual journeys of exploration in cooking for his three children.

Stefan Dercon is Professor of Economic Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and the Economics Department, and a Fellow of Jesus College. He is also Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies. He combines his academic career with work as a policy advisor, providing strategic economic and development advice, and promoting the use of evidence in decision making. His research interests concern what keeps some people and countries poor: the failures of markets, governments and politics, mainly in Africa, and how to achieve change.

Yacine Bio Tchané is a Beninese economist with more than 15 years of experience in public financial management, international development and research across Sub Saharan Africa. She started her career as an ODI Fellow at the South African National Treasury working on enhancing peer learning in PFM reforms 
at CABRI and has since intervened in research, management consulting and as a consultant focusing on public sector reforms, including implementing the PDIA approach. Since October 2023, she joined Genesis Analytics as Principal PFM at the HD practice where she works on the nexus between PFM and key social sectors including adaptive social protection in fragile contexts with UNICEF. When Yacine is not working, she is spending time with her kids, reading, or watching her favorite shows.

Yasemin Kisbu is a part-time impact evaluation consultant for UNICEF Evaluation Office. Under the UNICEF Impact Catalyst Fund, she currently leads two randomized controlled trials on child protection. She is also an associate professor at Koç University in Istanbul since 2014. Prior to joining Koç University, she worked as a post-doc researcher at Northwestern University Institute for Policy Research on developing novel quasi-experimental methods.

Yves Jaques is a technologist who has led data teams in the private and public sector from agriculture to retail analytics. Following several years as the director of a big data team at a New York fashion forecaster, he is currently Chief of the Frontier Data and Technology Unit at UNICEF where his team delivers on AI, geospatial platforms, and open data solutions. In his spare time, he likes to compose kooky electronic music.

Zlata Bruckauf is a Senior Evaluation Specialist at the United Nations Children´s Fund (UNICEF). At the UNICEF HQ, she leads the global evaluation work on thematic impact evaluations (multi-country portfolios), methods, data science and learning. She designed and advised on many research and evaluation projects 
focusing on social policy and education sectors. She holds a doctorate degree in comparative social policy from the University of Oxford (UK).