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James Gilling, regional vice president, East Asia and Pacific, has almost 40 years of experience in social and economic development in low- and middle-income countries. He has overseen Australian aid programs worth hundreds of millions of dollars and managed large teams of Australian and overseas staff, including as head of the Australian aid program in Indonesia. James has worked for United Kingdom (UK) and Papua New Guinea governments as an agricultural economist. He has also worked as a consultant economist with Oxford Policy Management in the UK and was an economic analyst with the Office of National Assessments in Australia.

Francesca Lawe-Davies is a senior development specialist with more than 18 years of experience in government, non-government, private sector, and multilateral development organisations. She has broad experience leading teams in complex development programs across Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Francesca has worked with government and civil society leaders at all levels, providing strategic and technical advice and guiding programmatic support on education policy and delivery, decentralisation, village governance, peacebuilding, and gender-based violence prevention and response services.

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.

Clark Abt, an engineer, environmentalist, entrepreneur, educator and social scientist, is the founder and past president of Abt Global Inc. He served as Abt’s President from 1965 to 1985, Chairman of the Board of Directors from 1986 to 2005, and was then elected Chairman Emeritus. He is the author of 10 books on social and economic policies and advanced technologies, as well as many articles.Clark Abt was born in Cologne, Germany, in 1929, and came to the United States in 1937. He entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a freshman in aeronautical engineering in 1947 and graduated with a bachelor's degree in general engineering in 1951. He then served four months in the Merchant Marine as an ordinary seaman, followed by a year at Johns Hopkins University as an English instructor, obtaining an M.A. from the Department of Writing, Speech and Drama for this master thesis, “A Year of Poems.”

Elizabeth Giardino’s evaluation and technical assistance work on housing, community development, asset building, and government innovation policies and programs promotes opportunity and healthy outcomes for people across the U.S. Giardino specializes in leading teams, strategic planning, and relationship building, and has proven expertise in incorporating community-based participatory research into technical assistance engagements.

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.

David Cooley is an environmental scientist with more than 15 years of experience working in climate change and environmental management. His work has focused on the interactions between climate change mitigation, air pollution reductions, and improvements in public health. He has managed multiple projects for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Agency for International Development, and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to evaluate opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) and air pollutant emissions.

Brooke Abrams is a trained political scientist and researcher. With over 11 years of experience, she specializes in applied housing and health, bringing expertise in managing and contributing to place-based, mixed-method, and community-centered solutions. Her work spans research, evaluation, and technical assistance (TA) projects across diverse policy domains, delivering innovative and tailored strategies to drive impactful change.As a Client Solutions Architect at Abt, Abrams plays a pivotal role in designing client-focused frameworks and solutions that emphasize rigorous, data-informed, multi-disciplinary, and population-tailored design. She specializes in community-specific, monitoring, evaluation, and technical assistance approaches to engage and work alongside persons with lived expertise.

Sanjoti Parekh has 20 years of experience serving in leadership, management, and advisory roles in the Australian healthcare industry. Prior to that she worked as a clinician for five years. With expertise in public health, epidemiology, and primary care, she leads policy and program reviews, rapid and systematic literature reviews, health services planning, and development of population health strategies. In addition, Sanjoti oversees outcome and impact evaluations, post-implementation reviews, and quality-improvement, governance, and research programs.

Lisanne F. Brown has more than 20 years of experience in public health evaluation and research and a background in epidemiologic and program evaluation methods. She has worked on numerous evaluation and applied research studies for local, state and federal agencies. Her areas of expertise include maternal and child health, health care access, integration of primary care and behavioral health, community-centered health homes, social determinants of health, mixed methods evaluation design and implementation, survey design, and evaluation capacity building.