Professional Experience:
- My main area of expertise is institutional development, with a focus on public sector management in the context of poverty reduction strategy and fragile states. Over the last ten years I have done a great deal of work in monitoring and evaluation, ranging from project evaluation to the assessment of national policies (Madagascar, Burundi);
- Over the last five years I have also provided technical assistance as institutional development specialist to help set up or strengthen national PRSP monitoring and evaluation systems in fragile or post-conflict states (Burundi, Central African Republic, Haiti, Côte d'Ivoire);
- This technical assistance work included upstream interventions, providing facilitation and methodological support for the elaboration of operational policy matrices including the identification of M&E indicators (for sectors comprising justice, defense and security, education, health, agriculture, etc.);
- A result of this TA was the strengthening of these countries' policy making capacity, achieved through working closely with government officials and providing methodological support (process facilitation, technical advice, coaching), with a strong emphasis on learning by doing;
- This practice has been built on prior experience at the World Bank with analytical work on poverty issues and the impact of policies : preparation of poverty analyses of several African countries, elaboration of a Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (public sector retrenchment in Katanga) and development related projects, cross-cutting the issues of local development, decentralization, social funds, accountability issues and governance;
- I have also expertise on, and great interest for, regional integration issues: The focus of my doctoral dissertation (2002) was on the institutional dynamics and processes of regional integration in the European Union (Treaty of Maastricht), and I have done work on establishing the M&E system for the Niger River Basin Authority;
- In client countries I have facilitated seminars, focus groups and workshops with government officials, civil society representatives and international partners to prepare logical frameworks and policy action matrices, as well as do strategic planning and organizational change (education in Madagascar). I believe I have developed, in the course of that work, effective “capacity building manners;”
- The first chapter of my professional life was spent as a journalist involved in change projects: after graduating from the university, I participated in the development of the French FM industry, and then moved on to venture capitalism in San Francisco, working on the development of an international magazine focused on the new paths our world might take.