Professional Experience:
I entered the development profession in 2010 in the Middle East where I started off as a Women and Youth Programs intern for Plan International’s Alexandria, Egypt field office. As the only bilingual staff member, I was able to liaise between the field and headquarters to providing leadership with rich qualitative and quantitative data on projects for women’s community banking and street children protection. I spoke colloquial Egyptian Arabic to interviewed beneficiaries at partner Islamic Charities, and used data to recommend programmatic improvements and to write data-driven success stories and progress reports in English.
In 2011, after a year of volunteering for Reclaim Childhood (RC), a Sport for Development (S4D) 501(c)3 nonprofit, I was hired as Jordan Country Director. Through my leadership, the organizational strategy evolved to address Jordan’s emerging urban Syrian refugee crisis through a community sports-based approach. I spearheaded local registration, and established RC’s monitoring and evaluation systems. This initiative continues to improve RC's results-based management. RC now develops sports-based solutions to meet the pressing psycho-social challenges facing refugee women and girls from Iraq and Syria. I currently serve on RC’s board where I provide regular guidance on the use of sport for local integration and protection of women and girls living as refugees.
I sought to professionalize the lessons I learned in the field by beginning graduate school in 2012. The Global Human Development Masters program at Georgetown University allowed me to study the disproportionate toll of humanitarian disasters on women and girls, effective risk reduction measures, and the gap between relief and development.
Meanwhile, I continued to develop valuable back-office skills working for one and half years in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) for the international humanitarian NGO International Medical Corps (IMC). I have deployed with IMC to the field three times, responding to crises in Turkey, the Philippines, and Nepal. I also provided Technical Assistance for country teams for one year from Washington D.C. Headquarters.
I have worked for two cumulative years as a development researcher and consultant at the United Nations and U.S. government levels. For the past year I consulted for the U.S. State Department to evaluate the Department's progress on gender integration in Diplomatic work. Prior to this, I worked in Egypt for the World Health Organization (WHO) conducting internal research on WHO's strengths and weaknesses in emergency response in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. Previously, I consulted for UN Women on an assessment to map global demand for women's empowerment projects.
I am currently based in Nepal working as Chief Program and Development Officer for a Nepali start up organization, the Center for Dalit Women. I support research, design, and management of human rights-based inclusion and advocacy programs