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Leisa Gibson, the Gender Equality, Disability, and Social Inclusion (GEDSI) senior advisor and practice lead for Abt in Britain, has more than 20 years of international experience working for governments, the United Nations, and civil society organisations. Her expertise includes strategic and operational planning, program formulation and delivery, change management, coordination and partnerships, quality assurance, and targeted interventions. She works on such issues as disability, development, inclusive leadership, gender and gender-based violence (GBV) in humanitarian action, child marriage, women’s economic empowerment, and organisational capacity development.

Natalie Matthews has over 15 years of experience in the field of homelessness, with a focus on direct service, system planning, database administration, and technical assistance and implementation (TA). Since joining Abt in 2009, Matthews has served in a variety of roles on its U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Community Compass TA cooperative agreements. She’s also worked on several locally and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)-funded TA projects, as well as research, monitoring and evaluation projects.  She served as the project director for the VA’s Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) monitoring project, served on the evaluation team for HUD’s first evaluation of rapid re-housing programs for families (2012), and led the evaluation of Hartford Connecticut’s homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing program (2014).

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.

Michael Witt brings more than 33 years of experience as a statistician specializing in survey design and survey data analytics. He has more than 27 years of managing staff at the administrative and project level. Mr. Witt has worked with government clients in fields ranging from energy to healthcare.

Liam Ristow is a mixed methods evaluator with 20+ years of evaluation experience in the areas of K-12 and postsecondary education, services for disconnected youth, and community-level change initiatives addressing health and homelessness. He has extensive experience designing and conducting complex multi-year implementation and outcome evaluations for clients at the federal, state and local levels. Ristow brings particular expertise in design of data collection protocols, qualitative data collection and analysis, and development of relevant, actionable evaluation reports.

Dr. Anna Koehle is a senior associate with 20 years of experience working in local, state, and federal child welfare programs and services. Dr. Koehle is a Human Services Board-Certified Practitioner (HS-BCP) and a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional (CCTP). Her evidence-to-practice approach to child welfare technical assistance and innovation has allowed her to contribute to systems improvement across the country. Dr. Koehle has lived experience as a foster and adoptive parent and focuses her work on the needs of Black children and families involved with the child welfare system. Her experience includes federal child welfare technical assistance, state child welfare quality assurance, child welfare contracts and grants administration, and human services nonprofit leadership.

Peter Saling has 14 years of experience designing, leading, and managing programs to increase incomes through agriculture-based livelihoods. His expertise spans from expanding climate resilient livelihoods to increasing affordable access to financing for catalyzing enterprise growth. Saling has designed climate smart agriculture, economic development, and financial sector strengthening programs in more than a dozen countries across sub-Saharan Africa, southeast Asia, and the Middle East. He has worked with governments, the private sector, cooperatives and associations, and civil society to link agricultural producers and small businesses to markets, while also designing innovations to engage young people in agriculture and increase earning opportunities for smallholder farmers.

Dr. Jenna Jadin is an ecologist with 15 years of experience in climate adaptation, mitigation, and land rehabilitation in the agriculture and forestry sectors. She has worked with both national and local governments, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, and United Nations (UN) system organizations in the U.S., Indonesia, Afghanistan, Thailand, Cambodia, Montenegro, Djibouti, Azerbaijan, and most recently Ukraine. With these institutions, she has provided technical advice, capacity building, curriculum development, and hands-on implementation support. She has also led and supported project management and design for the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), the Mitigation Action Facility (MAF) and bilateral donors and has led fundraising and strategic science-focused communications for NGOs and the UN.

Bennett LaFond is an agroecologist with eight years of experience working to strengthen U.S. and international agriculture and food systems. His work has centered around developing market-led approaches to improving livelihoods and creating resilience for farmers and their committees. He has worked with agribusinesses; a broad range of U.S. state and federal agencies; international donors and non-profits; and tribal, state, and national governments to design and implement programs to help farmers and their communities increase resilience, earnings, and production.