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Susan Longley has 20 years of experience leading large-scale policy implementation and change management efforts for numerous federal clients such as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Named a top healthcare exec to watch in 2023, she has collaborated with key stakeholders to maintain mission-critical initiatives in areas such as health care quality, public reporting, performance measurement, and domestic preparedness. She has implemented growth and diversification strategies across multiple sectors, including health and homeland security.

Julia Watson is an economist and health systems specialist with 25 years of experience working on both developed and developing country health systems. She has extensive experience managing people and programs and collaborating with a wide range of partners. Her work focuses on improving health financing systems and strengthening the stewardship role of governments in mixed health systems.

Lauren Olsho is a senior health economist and evaluator with expertise in random assignment, quasi-experimental evaluation methods, economic modeling methodology, and advanced statistical and econometric analysis.Olsho’s primary research interests are in health, nutrition and health behaviors in vulnerable populations – including the elderly, the poor, program participants, minorities, arrestees and at-risk youth.Olsho recently served as principal investigator on a cluster random assignment evaluation of the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality On-Time Falls Prevention Initiative, a clinical decision support intervention to reduce falls in long-term care settings.

Lauren Pittenger comes to Abt with more than 20 years of experience working in or as a consultant to federal government agencies. She has strong grounding in research and research-based consulting to government clients. She also has extensive experience leading and growing business, managing technical and scientific projects, and coaching and supporting account teams. She has served as a director at Guidehouse, scientific program manager at Booz Allen Hamilton, and lab manager at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She has worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Canadian Public Health Laboratory Network, the Gates Foundation and the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

Anna Winoto has more than 20 years of experience leading and managing multi-disciplinary teams on complex development programs in Indonesia. Her areas of expertise include public health and nutrition, social protection, child protection, decentralized service delivery, and community-led development.  She is a skilled facilitator of multi-stakeholder collaboration. She has worked with the national governments of Australia and Indonesia and with UNICEF.

Kelly Saldana has 25 years of experience in international development and health, including infectious diseases and nutrition. She worked in many regions of the world while serving in senior roles at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). She has worked with public, private, and non-profit sectors and communities. She represented USAID on interagency and international advisory committees and expert groups involving health systems strengthening. Beginning in 2021, Saldana also served as the strategic programming lead for the agency’s COVID-19 response and programmed $6 billion from American Rescue Plan funds to help end the COVID-19 pandemic.

Olga Zues, a health-system and financing specialist, has 20 years of experience in international development. She focuses on the design and implementation of comprehensive reform strategies to strengthen health systems and public finance management. Her expertise includes benefits design to move towards universal health coverage, arrangements to support efficiency gains and service delivery improvements, innovative payment mechanisms, sustainability strategies, and institutional development. She has worked with the World Health Organisation (WHO), the World Bank, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the UK Department for International Development – now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office – and numerous ministries of health, finance, justice, and education.

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.

Kelly Wagner has over two decades of experience in the provision of culturally competent technical assistance (TA), training, and capacity building. A skilled public health professional trained in epidemiology, she has developed and led more than 10 national TA programs for federal awardees, including community-based organizations, health centers, academic institutions, and state/local health agencies, reaching target audiences with unique and diverse public health needs across the lifespan. Her areas of expertise include minority health, health disparities and equity, behavioral health, HIV/AIDS and infectious diseases, service integration, and women’s health.

Shelby Hickman is a mixed methods research and evaluation professional with 14 years of experience in program evaluation, training and technical assistance, and analysis of criminal and juvenile justice administrative data. Dr. Hickman has expertise in overseeing studies funded by the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services. She has experience in causal inference methods for both random assignment and quasi-experimental designs. Additionally, she is proficient in qualitative methodologies, such as semi-structured interviews, focus groups, cognitive interviews, and observations. Hickman is also an expert in forced labor and human trafficking.