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Shelly Spoeth brings more than 25 years of strategic communication and social marketing experience to tackling complex health and social issues.  She  worked for a decade with pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients while at public relations firms including Ketchum, FleishmanHillard and Cohn & Wolfe. She then worked as a consultant for government and nonprofit clients, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), on behavioral change challenges ranging from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. Spoeth has implemented, evaluated, and managed dozens of projects that improved health outcomes. Her capabilities include formative research and digital outreach.

Dr. Fiona Mactaggart is a multi-disciplinary technical advisor with more than 10 years of experience in monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (MERL); infectious disease control; and public health. As a co-lead of Abt's MERL portfolio, she draws on complexity theory and scientific methods to help clients test what works, discover why it works, and provide timely evidence-based recommendations to inform important decisions about policy and practice. Mactaggart contributes to business development, programme delivery, and thought leadership. She works in five key areas: monitoring (e.g., design of digital tools and visualisation platforms) research (e.g., cross-sectional survey design), evaluation methodologies (e.g., contribution analysis), learning (e.g., portfolio level evidence-informed strategic decision making), and cross-cutting MERL capabilities (e.g., adaptive management and GEDSI). Mactaggart has worked extensively in the Pacific and Southeast Asia.

Dr. Hecht is an environmental economist with more than 19 years of experience in economic analysis, policy analysis, and research. His primary areas of expertise are in environmental economics, cost-benefit analysis, regulatory economics, and decision analysis. Dr. Hecht is an expert in estimating the monetary value of “non-market” benefits, such as improvements in environmental quality, public health, safety, and security. Hecht has over 10 years of experience in enviromental economic analysis and in evaluating the costs and benefits of mitigation measures

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.

Mbuso Jama has more than 17 years of experience as a Monitoring Evaluation Accountability Research and Learning expert (MEAL and MERL). His work has involved humanitarian, rehabilitation, and development efforts in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Partnership countries. His experience ranges from designing MEAL systems for adaptive management to impact evaluations. He has worked on projects funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), United Nations, US Agency for International Development (USAID), Canadian International Development Agency, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, European Union, and European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations.

Alan McCagh has more than 20 years of experience in complex program management and technical oversight for government institutional strengthening, economic development, community development, democratic governance, and in the law and justice sector. A former senior Western Australia police officer, Alan has expertise in institutional strengthening of the police, courts, and prisons. He also has experience with grant-making facilities to improve community access to legal aid, policy dialogue, research, and crime prevention.

Jessica Gillmore is an international and community development professional with more than 20 years of experience working in Asia and the Pacific. She has expertise leading teams and managing complex donor programs across a diverse range of sectors including health, gender and women’s empowerment, community-driven development, education, governance and law and justice. She is highly skilled in program design, strategy development, research and evaluation and building stakeholder relationships with government, non-government, civil society and private sector organisations.

Paulina Giusti is a pediatrician with over 30 years of managerial and clinical experience in the public health sector in Peru. She has been Vice Minister of Health, Chief of Staff for the MoH, Head of a government public health project to improve maternal and child health, among other positions. She has deep experience in health systems strengthening, being part of the design and initial implementation of a health sector reform in Peru between 2012-14. She has worked with high and mid-level authorities, international cooperation and with local healthcare providers.

Nassim Díaz Casado is the chief of party for the USAID Local Health System Sustainability Project (LHSS) in the Dominican Republic (DR). He is an expert in project management with extensive experience in health systems, strategic management, and international development programs in the health sector. Diaz has more than 15 years of experience working as a project director for multilateral organizations, including the World Bank and International Development Bank. He has been chief of party of the USAID- Health Finance and Governance (HFG) project in the Dominican Republic and country program manager for the USAID-SHOPS Plus project, in addition to consulting with international organizations and public and private entities on health and social security systems.

Miguel Pulido is a dentist with more than 20 years of national and international work experience promoting and implementing social, financial, and economic policies in the health sector. He has worked domestically at the Colombia Ministry of Health (MOH) with several departmental health secretariats and internationally on health projects with the Inter-American Development Bank and United Nations Development Programme in Panama, Guatemala, and Honduras. He was also the director of the US-based non-governmental organization Te Doy Foundation, working with HIV orphans in Africa.