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Philippa Venning has more than 25 years of experience working in international development across the Asia Pacific for government, the private sector, multilateral organisations and NGOs.

Lisa Simeon is Abt Global’s Chief Operations Officer.  In this role, Simeon is establishing a global operations function to cover all aspects of project management. It will include continuous improvement and scalability of Abt’s standards, processes, and digital platforms for project start-up and closeout, workforce planning, risk management, and quality review to achieve strong financial performance and ensure client satisfaction across the company. She will continue to oversee Human Resources and will add responsibility for global security operations and emergency response to her portfolio.

Jake Zebell is a technology leader with more than 20 years of experience in federal modernization, enterprise architecture, applied AI, and secure system delivery.

Kathleen Flanagan is president and chief executive officer of Abt Global. She assumed the position on October 1, 2009, after a distinguished career working across the broad range of markets and policy areas that reflect the company's business today. Flanagan joined the company in 1983 as a policy analyst in the Health Area. In 1989 she became managing vice president of the company's Labor Economics Research Area, overseeing research on workforce development and income security programs. In the mid-1990s she launched the International Workforce and Education Practice, winning projects from clients including the U.S. Agency for International Development, World Bank and U.S. Department of Labor. In 1998, she launched the company's Housing and Community Revitalization practice and built a team of more than 75 researchers and technical assistance staff working on affordable housing and community development policies at the federal, state and local levels. In 2005, she was named group vice president for social, economic, and health policy.

Sarah Gibson is a project-management specialist with 23 years of experience in public policy research. She has more than 20 years of experience managing complex projects, implementing random assignment studies and researching and analyzing policy for clients such as the Social Security Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. She is proficient in project management, including resource management, budgeting and quality control.

Etienne Fondjo is a medical entomologist specializing in malaria with 20 years of experience in project management and malaria control funded by the public sector and its partners. He has served as the national malaria coordinator and as the deputy national malaria coordinator in Cameroon’s National Malaria Control Program (NMCP). He has also consulted for the World Health Organization (WHO) in five countries, served as principal investigator for 11 projects in Cameroon, and was the Central Africa coordinator for the Mapping Malaria Risk in Africa (MARA) project in nine countries.

Dr. Reerink has more than 25 years of experience in promoting gender equality and social inclusion in international development, with a strong focus on the Asia-Pacific region.

Douglas W. Elmendorf, Ph.D., is Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He served as Dean of the Kennedy School from 2016 to 2024 and was previously Director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2009 to 2015.Elmendorf has held senior economic positions with the Federal Reserve Board, the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and the Treasury Department, where he was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy. He is a widely respected economist who has deep knowledge of many of Abt’s core research areas, including health care policy and approaches to increasing economic security.Elmendorf is the author of more than 30 publications and has testified before Congress on economic issues 50 times since 2005. 

Didar Ali Didar is technical advisor for monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (MERL) in Abt’s International Technical Practice (ITP). He has more than 10 years of experience in MERL, project design, and management in the areas of agriculture, food security, economic inclusion, civil society, governance, health, and education. He also has experience in women’s rights advocacy, including designing and implementing advocacy plans and organizing national and international events.