As a senior communications associate at Results for Development, Mr. Jez works on the Global Innovation Exchange team. He supports the marketing and communications objectives of GIE by utilizing data to shape products, enhance communications, refine messages and grow user engagement on the platform. Mr. Jez and the GIE team have a specific interest in scaling innovations in the developing world, connecting startup ecosystems, educating funders about investment opportunities and seeing innovations implemented on a large scale.

Mr. Jez has experience working alongside startups in the technology sector. A co-founder of Glass Smith, Mr. Jez and his team were selected to participate in a top-30 startup accelerator. He has been recognized by the Richmond Technology Council twice, was a finalist for the Virginia Velocity Tour, and was named a Person(s) to Watch in Virginia in 2018.

Before joining R4D, Mr. Jez worked alongside the team at Hatch and Hatchify as the first marketing hire developing a framework and process for scaling. Prior to this role, as co-founder of Glass Smith, he played a vital role in its scaling into a half-dozen cities, raising $250,000 and being acquired by Fixt in 2017.

Mr. Jez holds a BS from Appalachian State University in appropriate technology.

The post Jordan Jez appeared first on Results for Development.

Dr. Claeson was the program coordinator for the multisector response to AIDS in the South Asia region at the World Bank and task team leader for HIV operations in India and Afghanistan from 2005 to 2012. From 1998 to 2004, she served as lead public health specialist in the Health, Nutrition and Population Human Development Network at the World Bank. In this role, she contributed to health reform programs in Egypt, Jordan, Nigeria, Uzbekistan, China and the Philippines, including the development of innovative financing instruments such as a new lending instrument for multicountry malaria operations, a regional rapid-results agenda and buy-downs for global public goods.

Dr. Claeson also worked as a medical officer for the World Health Organization’s Global Programme for Control of Diarrhoeal Diseases, both globally and in Ethiopia, where she focused on national immunization and diarrheal disease control. She also worked as a physician in rural district-level clinical practice in Tanzania, Bangladesh and Bhutan.

Dr. Claeson is a commissioner on the Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing. As a member of the Bellagio Study Group on Child Survival, she participated in the call to action on child survival and co-authored Knowledge Into Action for Child Survival in 2003. She also served as a member of the WHO-UNICEF-Lancet Commission on A Future for the World’s Children and co-authored the World Bank reports The Millennium Development Goals for Health: Rising to the Challenges and Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries, Second Edition. She was awarded an honorary doctor of medicine degree by the Karolinska Institutet in 2015.

The post Mariam Claeson appeared first on Results for Development.

New literacy tools on the way

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Join us on February 5^th as we launch the “Storytelling Roadmap – A Toolkit for Literacy Practitioners” and find out how our community of literacy partners tackled these questions, along with practical guidance and tips they can share to aid you on your storytelling journey.

Participants will:

• Learn why storytelling is important but often overlooked;
• Take a tour of the Roadmap: Understand practical steps to identify, craft, organize and share great stories;
• Understand how the Roadmap has been used by literacy partners and how others might use it.

The Storytelling Roadmap is one of the five co-created resources developed through the Project Literacy Community of Practice. Developed by program implementers, researchers, and funders of literacy programs, including partners from Project Literacy and programs from R4D’s Center for Education Innovations (CEI), these resources are designed to help tackle the challenges literacy practitioners face in their work.

Participation: this webinar is open to the public. Literacy practitioners, researchers, funders of literacy programs, and storytellers are encouraged to attend, especially those with an interest in literacy, capacity building, and communities of practice.

Speakers

• Selena Garrahan, Worldreader, Spain
• Dr. Rana Dajani, We Love Reading, Jordan
• Kavita Hatipoglu, Results for Development, USA

The post Webinar: Launching the Storytelling Roadmap – A Toolkit for Literacy Practitioners appeared first on Results for Development.

Before joining R4D, Ms. Ali was a research fellow at Evidence for Policy Design at the Harvard Kennedy School for Government where she worked with Professors Rema Hanna, Rohini Pande, and Martin Abel on female labor market projects in Saudi Arabia. Previously, she worked at Endeavor Jordan, an NGO supporting high-impact entrepreneurship, where she contributed to the annual impact report and helped assess application companies based on business models, growth potential and fit with Endeavor. Ms. Ali also worked as a researcher at the Economic Development unit at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia in Lebanon, contributing to reports on the economic drivers of the Arab Spring and implications of the formation of a Gulf trade union.

Ms. Ali holds a master’s degree in international and development economics from Yale University and a BA in economics from New York University.

The post Zara Ali appeared first on Results for Development.

As chief financial officer at Results for Development, Ms. Sotelo is responsible for leading financial strategy and ensuring financial integrity. She provides executive leadership in the areas of finance, accounting, grants administration and business development.

Since joining R4D in 2019, Ms. Sotelo has instituted a new full-cost recovery rate structure, implemented a new financial system (JAMIS), created an organization-wide budget-tracking processes for over 100 awards from more than 15 funders valued at over $200M, overhauled R4D’s funder reporting mechanisms and built the finance team — during a period where the organization grew by 30 percent.

Over her career, Ms. Sotelo has developed and executed financial and business strategies, led finance teams through systems implementations and conversions for high-quality fiscal management, provided expertise in contract and customer negotiations and developed financial infrastructures for sound business management.

Prior to joining R4D, Ms. Sotelo served as a chief financial officer at CRDF where she oversaw 10 consecutive years of clean audits, an investment portfolio of over $30M, implementation of new travel and expense systems and IT integrations to improve organization-wide efficiency. She established international systems for accounting and reporting in Russia, Jordan and Ukraine, and led financial management and business consolidation of a CRDF for profit tech hub subsidiary. Before CRDF, Debra was an assistant controller at Population Services International (PSI) in Washington, D.C., where she was primarily responsible for reporting and consolidating 60 international field offices (ranging in size from $100,000 to $30 million).

Ms. Sotelo holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Strayer University, and is a certified public accountant and global management accountant. She speaks English and Spanish.

The post Debra Sotelo appeared first on Results for Development.

Ms. Al Rowais is a senior program officer in Results for Development’s Market Shaping practice. She leads the expansion of the practice’s flagship project in Uganda – a project to increase access to childhood pneumonia treatments in high-burden countries. She is also supporting the integration of market shaping as a cross-cutting approach across several of R4D’s health and nutrition projects.

During her career, Ms. Al Rowais has specialized in the areas of access to markets, financial inclusion, private sector development strategies and entrepreneurship promotion. Her work on the World Bank’s MENA Women’s Entrepreneurship Program was a precursor to the World Bank’s Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative, which increased donor commitments by $340 million to help women in developing countries gain increased access to the finance, markets and networks necessary to start and grow their own businesses. She has also developed and supported several projects and research start-ups addressing behavioral development challenges facing the South Asia and MENA regions, including: Islamic finance for development, financial literacy and consumer protection, economic zone development and entrepreneurship and early stage investment.

Before joining R4D, Ms. Al Rowais worked as a financial sector and private sector development specialist within the South Asia and MENA regions in the World Bank. She also advised small businesses on developing strategic plans for market expansion, technology-based business strategies and financial management.

Ms. Al Rowais holds an MS in finance and an MBA in international business from the George Washington University and a BSc. in computer science from the University of Jordan. She is a native speaker of both Arabic and English and is conversational in Macedonian.

The post Sara Al Rowais appeared first on Results for Development.