Alison Evans

Alison Evans was, until January 2023, the Director-General and Vice President for Evaluation at the World Bank Group. In this role she led the work of the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) in assessing the effectiveness and impact of lending, non-lending, investment and guarantee operations across public and private sectors in all geographies in which the World Bank Group operates. During her tenure, IEG was a founding partner of the Global Evaluation Initiative, a global partnership for supporting monitoring and evaluation capacity building in underserved regions of the world.  

Prior to the World Bank, Evans was Chief Commissioner of the UK’s Independent Commission for Aid Impact which scrutinises the quality and impact of UK aid spending and reports to the International Development Select Committee of the UK Parliament.   

Before taking a leading role in these critical scrutiny functions, Evans was Executive Director of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the UK’s leading global development and humanitarian think tank.

Evans has a PhD in development economics from the University of Sussex and an MPhil in the Economics and Politics of Development from the University of Cambridge. She has been an Non-Executive Director/Trustee of a number of mission-oriented organisations including Social Finance UK, BBC Media Action, the Christian Michelsen Institute, the Baring Foundation and Oxford Policy Management. She is currently a Non-Executive Director of Big Society Capital and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development.