Governance

Ruth Levine, PhD, is Chief Executive Officer of IDinsight, a global advisory, data analytics, and research organization.  Dr Levine, a development economist and expert in international development, global health and education, was a policy fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University between 2019-2020. Between 2011-1019, she served as the director of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Global Development and Population programme.

Before joining the Hewlett Foundation, Dr Levine was a deputy assistant administrator in the Bureau of Policy, Planning and Learning at the US Agency for International Development. In that role, she led the development of the agency’s evaluation policy.

Previously, Dr Levine spent nearly a decade at the Center for Global Development, an international policy research institute in Washington, DC. There, she served as a senior fellow and vice president for programmes and operations.

Dr Levine is the author or co-author of several books and professional publications, including “When Will We Ever Learn? Improving Lives through Impact Evaluation,” which led to the creation of 3ie, and "Making Markets for Vaccines:  Ideas to Action," which led to the development of the first Advance Market Commitment.

Dr Levine holds a BS in biochemistry from Cornell University and a PhD in economic demography from Johns Hopkins University.

Abdoulaye Gounou is currently the head, Bureau of Public Policy Evaluation and Government Action Analysis, Presidency, Benin. He is responsible for Benin’s national evaluation system and is the prime mover behind the West African Capacity-building and Impact Evaluation Program, supported by 3ie and Hewlett Foundation. From 2006 to 2013, he worked as a technical advisor to several ministers, including, economy and finance; business promotion; and an advisor to the prime minister on public-private partnerships. He was also the director-general of structural reforms and of good governance promotion (2013-2015) and then of evaluation in the Office of the Prime Minister (2015-2016). Abdoulaye has a diploma of Advanced Professional Studies in Business Administration and Project Management, with a Masters in Business Law. He has also worked with Danida managing a private sector development programme and a microfinance institution. He has also managed projects in Burkina Faso and Togo, as well as in Benin.

Alex Ezeh is a professor of Global Health in the Department of Community Health and Prevention at the Dornsife School of Public Health. He is also a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Center for Global Development, Washington, DC. Prior to this, as executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center, Dr Ezeh guided APHRC to become one of Africa’s foremost regional research centres addressing population, health and education issues. He also directs the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA), an initiative to strengthen the training and retention of academics at African universities. He was a member of the Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission on Planetary Health and currently serves on the Lancet Commission on the Future of Health in Africa. He also co-chairs the Guttmacher-Lancet Commission on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in the Post-2015 World. He is an honorary professor of public health at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and holds a doctorate in demography.

Carola Alvarez is an Argentinian national with 25 years of experience in international development. She is an expert on evaluation methods, poverty alleviation interventions and human resource development. She has also worked extensively on the design and evaluation of large conditional cash transfer programmes in the Latin American region and on Progresa in Mexico. 

Carola is currently chief of the development effectiveness division at the Inter-American Development Bank, where she led an institution-wide reform to increase the level of empirical evidence used to demonstrate results from the Bank’s work. The number of rigorous impact evaluations in Bank operations went from 5 per cent in 2008 to 40 per cent in 2012.  She has also had high-level managerial experience as general country manager for the Andean Region; and as a core member of the corporate team that negotiated the Bank’s Ninth Capital Increase of Resources; among other roles.

Elizabeth M King is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Previously, she was acting vice-president for the human development network before retiring in September 2014. She was the World Bank’s director of education from 2008- 2014, during which time she was the technical head and senior spokesperson for global policy issues related to education. She also led the development of the Bank’s current education strategy and served as its senior representative in global partnerships on education. Other roles at the Bank included research manager for human development issues, lead economist for the human development department for East Asian countries, co-author of three World Development Reports and member of the Research Committee. 

Elizabeth is currently a co-editor of the Comparative Education Review, a frequent reviewer for economics journals, and member of the advisory boards of CAMFED, Teach for All and the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab. Before joining the World Bank, she taught economics at University of the Philippines, UCLA and Tulane University and lectured at the Graduate Program in International Policy Studies in Tokyo and the Université d'Auvergne. 

She has published articles in professional journals, books and book chapters and blogs on topics such as investments in human capital, gender issues and decentralisation reforms. She has worked in countries as diverse as Bangladesh, Colombia, Ghana, Indonesia, Laos, Nicaragua, Pakistan and the Philippines, among others. She completed her BA and MA from the University of the Philippines, and holds a PhD in Economics from Yale University.

Ian has worked for 40 years in 18 countries on rural development, decentralisation, sustainable livelihoods approaches, community-driven development, and evidence-based policymaking and implementation. Ian is currently leading a research project on evidence-informed practice in Africa at the Centre for Learning on Evaluation and Results Anglophone Africa at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. He also lectures at the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance at the University of Cape Town and is a visiting professor the University of Reading, UK. 

Previously, Ian was the deputy director general in South Africa’s Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, where he led the establishment of the national evaluation system. He is also one of the founders of Twende Mbele, a partnership of African government and other M&E agencies that includes Uganda, Benin, South Africa, CLEAR AA and the African Development Bank. Ian has been a 3ie board commissioner since 2012.

Prior to his post as director for the Center for Education and Social Studies in Mexico, Miguel served as undersecretary for planning and evaluation at the Ministry of Social Development of Mexico, and as undersecretary for middle education at the Ministry of Education. Miguel has been professor at Oxford University, the Centre of Economic Studies at El Colegio de México and the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. He has authored 93 academic publications.

Oumoul Ba Tall is the Secretary General of Mauritania’s national evaluation association (Association Mauritanienne de suivi-evaluation), which she helped establish. She was formerly President of the International Organization for Cooperation in Evaluation. Oumoul has 19 years of professional experience, including in the fields of auditing, accounting, evaluation, organizational, microenterprise, microfinance, and community-based development. She is active in a wider movement to build and strengthen evaluation systems worldwide. She is also the executive director of OKT-Consult, an audit and management consultancy business she started in 1997 in Nouakchott, Mauritania.

Santiago Levy is a Non-resident Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution and Senior Advisor to the United Nations Development Program. Prior to this, he was president of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association and spent a decade as the vice president for sectors and knowledge at the Inter-American Development Bank. He also served as the Deputy Minister at Mexico’s Ministry of Finance and Public Credit from 1994-2000 and was head of Mexico’s Social Security Institute between 2000 and 2005.

At the finance ministry, Santiago was the main architect of Progresa-Oportunidades, Mexico’s incentive-based health, nutrition and education program for the poor; managed the transition from generalized to targeted subsidies; promoted legal reforms to decentralize resources to states and municipalities; participated in the change of the pay-as-you-go to the capitalized pension system; promoted a regional plan to develop Mexico’s southern region; and drafted and negotiated six budgets with the Federal Congress. At the Social Security Institute, he promoted legal changes to reform pensions and extend coverage to rural workers; was responsible for the provision of health services to 45 million people, introducing preventive health programs and electronic medical records; managed pensions for 2.5 million people and day-care centres for 230,000 children; managed $8 billion in reserves; and collected annually $20 billion in social security contributions. In 1993, he led the drafting of Mexico’s first anti-trust legislation, and then served as the first president of the Federal Competition Commission.

Santiago has received the following awards: First Place, National Research Prize in Economics, granted by Banco Nacional de México for his article, Poverty in Mexico; First Place, Latin American Economics Prize, granted by El Trimestre Económico for his article Multiple Exchange Rates and Foreign Exchange Rationing.

Santiago has published six books, several articles in academic journals and many book chapters on economic growth and productivity, social policy, informality, education, budgetary and tax policy, trade policy reform, rural and regional development, competition policy, labour markets, and policies for poverty alleviation. His latest book on economic growth in Mexico, Under-Rewarded Efforts, The Elusive Quest for Prosperity in Mexico was published in 2018 by the Inter-American Development Bank.

Susan Ketcham is a finance professional with experience in corporate planning and organizational development. She served as the Chief Financial Officer of the Hewlett Foundation, where she managed all corporate finance functions from 2001 through 2017. She helped the foundation as it grew in grants, effectiveness and evidence-based funding. Prior to that she served as the Chief Financial Officer at Skystream Networks, a privately-held technology firm.

She currently works as a consultant, focusing on the business management of non-profit and philanthropic organizations. She is engaged in furthering the organizational and financial strength of civil society organizations, both through her work as a consultant and her board work. Throughout her career she has been active in community development, including work on policy and programs relating to homelessness and housing. She holds an MBA degree from the Wharton School.