Edward T. Jackson, President
Edward Jackson is a management consultant, university professor and editor specializing in evaluation and ecosystem-building on both the supply and demand sides of impact investing, blended finance, and gender lens investing in emerging markets. He is president of E. T. Jackson and Associates Ltd., an award-winning boutique management consulting firm that provides professional services to development agencies, investment funds, foundations and universities in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Dr. Jackson has advised the Australian, Canadian, Danish, and Swiss development cooperation programs, the Mastercard, McConnell, and Rockefeller foundations, Caribbean Development Bank, Deloitte, Développement international Desjardins, EMIIF, German Institute for Development Evaluation, International Development Research Centre, Inter-American Development Bank, Investing in Women, United Nations Environment Programme, UN Women, World Bank, and WUSC.
An active, multidisciplinary scholar, and retired tenured university professor and former associate dean, Professor Jackson holds appointments as senior research fellow at the Carleton Centre for Community Innovation at Carleton University, adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa, and honorary associate with the Institute of Development Studies in Brighton, UK. A member of the Impact and Sustainable Finance Faculty Consortium of the Kellogg School of Management, he is also an Associate Editor of the Journal of Sustainable Finance and Investment, and co-edited JSFI’s 2022 special issue on growing gender lens investing in emerging markets. Originally trained in adult education and community development, Ted Jackson earned the Responsible Investment Professional Certification from the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment and the Responsible Investment Association. He is a Canadian national based in Ottawa.
Magda J. Seydegart, Principal
A specialist in human rights education, gender equality and civil society, Magda Seydegart is Principal of the firm. She has served as an evaluation, planning and training consultant to Amnesty International-English Section, Global Affairs Canada, UNDP, UNESCO and other governmental and non-governmental agencies, and was twice appointed to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal Panel. Her international overseas work has included assignments in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, The Gambia, Ghana, Kyrgyzstan, The Philippines, and Taiwan. A board member with Habitat for Humanity in the Ottawa region, Ms. Seydegart has been honoured by both the Canadian and Ontario governments for her leadership in human and women’s rights. She works in English and French, and speaks Polish, as well.
Karim Harji, Director of Research
Karim Harji is Senior Associate and Director of Research of the firm. A Kenyan-Canadian, Mr. Harji is a leading international expert on impact investing and impact measurement. A former advisor to the Rockefeller Foundation, he served as lead consultant on the Impact Investment Initiative evaluation and on the monitoring and evaluation project of the foundation’s PRIDE Initiative on digital jobs for youth. He also served as the lead researcher and writer for The Mastercard Foundation on the Youth at Work report, and has provided advisory services to the program and evaluation units of that foundation. In 2016-2017, he co-chaired a task force of the Government of Ontario to develop a common approach on impact measurement for the social enterprise sector. In 2014-2015, he served as a member of the Impact Measurement Working Group of the G8 Social Impact Investment Task Force. In Canada, through his work with Purpose Capital, a firm he co-founded, Mr. Harji has advised leading Canadian impact investors – including foundations, high net worth individuals, banks, and credit unions – on the design and implementation of impact investing strategies, portfolios, and transactions. He developed two executive training courses on impact measurement at the University of Oxford and University of Cape Town, respectively, and has taught in academic and professional programmes in North America, Europe, and Africa. Active in numerous professional associations, Mr. Harji co-founded the Topical Interest Group on Social Impact Measurement of the American Evaluation Association.
Coleman Agyeyomah, Senior Associate
Coleman Agyeyomah is one of Ghana’s most skilled and experienced community development experts. Most recently, he served on the Jackson and Associates team that evaluated, for the Mastercard Foundation, the Camfed program for girls’ education and young women’s leadership in northern Ghana. He has advised the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, Ghanaian and international non-governmental organizations, and major projects in local governance, water management and small business supported by Canada, Denmark, Germany, the World Bank and other development actors. The Executive Director of Venceremos Consulting, Mr. Agyeyomah studied in Cuba and at Leeds University, and has published on indigenous knowledge production and participatory research. He is a Ghanaian national based in Tamale.
Ansbert Amoro, Senior Associate
Ansbert Amoro is Senior Associate specializing in project finance, business management and information technology. A Ghanaian national based in Tamale, he served as a core team member on the evaluation of CIDA’s District-Wide Approach Project in northern Ghana. He has undertaken assignments in Ghana on project finances, procurement systems and value for money. He holds two MBA degrees.
Denise Beaulieu, Senior Associate
Dr. Beaulieu has been a Senior Associate of E.T. Jackson and Associates since 1996. She brings over 20 years of consulting experience in gender equality, programme evaluation and knowledge management in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. She has proven skills in mixed-methods and gender-sensitive research and evaluation design, training, results-based management, theory of change analysis, focus-group facilitation, and online survey design and implementation.
Between 2016 and 2018, Dr. Beaulieu served as senior evaluation consultant and gender specialist in mid-term evaluations of the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program implemented at British Columbia, California (Berkeley), Duke, McGill, Michigan State, Stanford and Toronto universities. These reviews employed a range of methods and tools, including theory of change analysis, key-informant interviews, Scholar town halls/ dialogues, online surveys, feedback sessions for university program teams, and workshop presentations to Foundation staff. The findings of these evaluations informed the strategy, operations and learning processes of the Scholars Program.
In 2016-2017, for Jackson and Associates and Deloitte Canada, Dr. Beaulieu carried out an in-depth evaluation of the Caribbean activities of the World Bank’s infoDev Program. In particular, she led the review of the methods and results of the Entrepreneurship Program for Innovation in the Caribbean (EPIC), a $20M program funded by the Bank and Global Affairs Canada, which included a component aimed at supporting the growth-oriented women entrepreneurs, the Women Innovators Network in the Caribbean. In addition, Dr. Beaulieu has led other program evaluations in the areas of higher education, youth livelihoods, rural livelihoods and reproductive health, and has taken part in several others as a deputy-team leader and gender specialist.
Dr. Beaulieu has also carried out key assignments aimed at supporting development and education organizations in improving the effectiveness of knowledge utilization to inform evidence-based decision making. These projects have included a strategic review of research at UNICEF (2018), the development of a knowledge management strategy for UNICEF South Asia Region, reviews of the practices and challenges of Global Affairs Canada, an in-depth review of the utilization and design of a performance measurement framework for the Knowledge Services Unit of Canada’s Green Municipal Fund, and a review of selected donor policies on research. Through these and other assignments, Dr. Beaulieu has built in-depth expertise for the design of knowledge sharing events that maximize individual and organizational learning.
Dal Brodhead, Senior Associate
Dal Brodhead is a specialist in micro-finance, social enterprise, governance, community development, and development evaluation who has worked in all regions of the world as well as in northern Canada. A former executive in the Government of Canada, he has advised CIDA (now Global Affairs Canada), IDRC, UNDP and other public and private organizations in Bangladesh, Haiti, India, Kenya, Mali, Mongolia, Tibet and elsewhere, and has served as a volunteer board member with Inter Pares and Planned Parenthood of Canada. Mr. Brodhead is fluent in French and English.
Natasha Cassinath, Senior Associate
Natasha Cassinath is Senior Associate specializing in child and youth development, particularly in the areas of livelihoods and financial literacy. She served as team leader of a major evaluation of the work of Save the Children in youth development in five African countries; this evaluation was commissioned by the Mastercard Foundation. She also worked as senior researcher on the thematic review of the Foundation’s youth livelihoods programming. With extensive field experience in East and Southern Africa, South Asia and elsewhere, Ms. Cassinath has built recognized expertise in youth career development, business approaches to development, micro-enterprise and micro-franchise development, social entrepreneurship and innovation, and individual and organizational capacity building. A former Chief Innovation Officer with Street Kids International, she has advised Catholic Relief Services, Technoserve and the Carter Center. Ms. Cassinath is also co-founder of YouthProfit.ca, a Canadian network that develops youth employment program models. She is on leave with Grand Challenges Canada.
Katherine Graham, Senior Associate
Katherine Graham is Senior Associate specializing in local governance and public-sector leadership development. Formerly associate vice-president and dean of public affairs at Carleton University, Professor Graham has advised Global Affairs Canada and governments in Brazil, China, Ghana and Vietnam. Fluent in both French and English, Professor Graham has also worked extensively on Aboriginal and northern policy issues in Canada. Her many accomplishments have been recognized by the Government of Ontario and by Carleton University.
Hamdiya Ismaila, Senior Associate
Hamdiya Ismaila is one of West Africa’s leaders in innovative finance, venture capital, angel investing and gender lens investing. With nearly 20 years of experience in venture fund structuring and promoting venture investment ecosystems in Ghana and across West Africa, she currently serves as General Manager of Ghana’s Venture Capital Trust Fund, which mobilizes private and public capital to place in small businesses in diverse sectors across the country. She is also a Director of the Ghana Angel Fund, Council Member of the Ghana Alternative Exchange, Chair of MBC Africa (a Pan-African start-up accelerator) and Founder of the Lady Angel Network. Ms. Ismaila is a frequent speaker on impact investment and gender lens investing in Africa, Europe and North America. She holds degrees in law, public policy and business management, and studied in the executive program of the Harvard Business School.
John Jacobs, Senior Associate
Dr. John Jacobs, Senior Associate with the firm, is an experienced research specialist with extensive expertise in international finance. Dr. Jacobs’ research has examined the factors and policies that increase the flow and development impact of international investment, including blended financing, support to women-led enterprises and the capacity of African governments to manage their risks associated with financing projects through international financial markets. He has researched investment flows to both the private and public sectors and the role development finance institutions, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and regional development banks such as the African Development Bank. In 2018, Dr. Jacobs served as lead researcher on development capital strategies and products for the MasterCard Foundation. he holds a PhD in public policy from Carleton University.
Dr. Jacobs has broad expertise in data collection and desk research including quantitative data collection, analysis and presentation. He has worked extensively with international economic data bases such as UNCTADStat and the World Bank Development Indicators and African domestic data sources. Dr. Jacobs has made extensive use of in-person field research interviews, telephone inter-views and electronic surveys and communications to collect data. He has applied these techniques at all levels of analysis from the micro to the macro, from the community to the global level. Recent research projects have included collecting foreign direct investment and trade data for Africa, collecting client country views on capacity building by international debt management facilities and the application of gender-based analysis to, community maternal health interview data for a World Vision, Save the Children and Plan International’s “Born on Time” project.
Dr. Jacobs has extensive knowledge of and experience working within African market systems, financial sectors and institutions, gained through his work on development financing, most recently exemplified in his work on an evaluation of the World Bank and IMF’s Debt Management Facility and through his work regional development banks with Global Affairs Canada. His recently completed PhD thesis (Public Policy, Carleton University, 2017) analyzes efforts to increase the contribution of foreign direct investment to employment and private sector business creation in Africa’s natural resource sectors.
Dr. Jacobs also worked with African regional trade and investment institutions in the preparation of master briefs on African regional economic integration for senior UNDP officials.
Through his work as a managing director of a social and economic policy research institute, an international research consultant and as a researcher with more than 100 polic- related publications and presentations, Dr. Jacobs has developed an expertise in research project management, data presentation and communication.
Farouk Jiwa, Senior Associate
Farouk Jiwa serves as Senior Associate specializing in value-chain structuring, social enterprise, social impact metrics, impact investing, and corporate social responsibility. A successful social entrepreneur, he serves as chief information officer with Farm Shop and founded Honey Care, both major social-purpose businesses in East Africa. He is a former senior technical director with CARE USA, and program manager with CARE Canada and the Aga Khan Foundation of Canada, and teaches at the Coady Institute at St. Frances Xavier University. Mr. Jiwa’s innovation and excellence have been recognized by Ashoka, Queen’s University, UNDP, World Bank, and the World Economy Forum. He is based in Nairobi.
Yusuf Kassam, Senior Associate
Yusuf Kassam is Senior Associate specializing in basic education, governance, civil society and program evaluation. He was born in Tanzania, and is a former director of the Institute for Adult Education in Tanzania. Fluent in Swahili, Mr. Kassam served for more than two decades as an evaluation consultant for Jackson and Associates to AusAID, BRAC, Global Affairs Canada and other governmental and non-profit agencies in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, working frequently in Bangladesh and Tanzania, in particular. Mr. Kassam is also an author and a poet.
Anja Koenig, Senior Associate
Anja Koenig, Senior Associate, is a specialist in impact investing, social and green entrepreneurship, and inclusive business. She was the lead author for Private Capital for Sustainable Development, the firm’s research report for Danida. The lead for Investing 4Change @ Impact Hub Berlin and founder of Social Impact Markets in Istanbul and Berlin, Ms. Koenig is an international thought leader and practitioner in impact investing capacity building and policy research in impact investing. For more than 15 years, she has served as a senior consultant in Turkey, Kenya, The Philippines, the UK and Germany for major development agencies, including GIZ, USAID, the World Bank, UNDP, KfW and DFID, in sectors such as impact investing, green and inclusive business, microfinance, housing, water and irrigation, public-private partnerships, corporate finance, and regional development. Ms. Koenig also recently directed the social investment program of the JP Morgan Chase Foundation at Sabanci University and as Mercator-IPC Fellow at the same university. She holds an MBA from the University of Mannheim and is a graduate of the Oxford Impact Investment Program at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School. She works in German, English, French, Portuguese and Turkish.
Elaina Mack, Senior Associate
Elaina Mack, a Senior Associate, specializes in child rights and community development. She is skilled in connecting people, partnerships and practices to support children to thrive through empathetic, evidence-based and engaged action. Ms. Mack has over fifteen years of experience in the not-for-profit sector in child participation, play, protection, youth engagement as well as community-based participatory research methodologies and developmental evaluation. She has coordinated complex, multi-year initiatives involving teams of diverse cross-sectoral partners, including young people themselves, across several countries (Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Thailand, Mali). Ms. Mack has contributed to significant research, evaluation and education projects internationally as well as with Indigenous and newcomer-focused partners in Canada. She holds an MA in public policy and administration from Carleton University.
Allan Maslove, Senior Associate
Allan Maslove, a Senior Associate, specializes in local governance, public finance, inter-governmental relations, public-sector leadership development, higher education and cost-benefit analysis. He worked extensively in northern Ghana with the DISCAP project. Dr. Maslove is a distinguished research professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University, where he previously served as director of the School, dean of the Faculty of Public Affairs, and acting university vice-president.
Kevin McKague, Senior Associate
Kevin McKague, a Senior Associate, is an assistant professor of entrepreneurship and strategy at the Shannon School of Business, Cape Breton University, and an internationally experienced academic and researcher of market-based and social enterprise-led approaches to global poverty alleviation. Dr. McKague served as senior consultant on Jackson and Associates’ thematic review of the economic opportunities for youth portfolio of the Mastercard Foundation. He has led major research projects for the International Finance Corporation (World Bank), the UN’s Growing Inclusive Markets Initiative and the International Development Research Centre. His research has spanned 12 African countries as well as Bangladesh, Canada, the US and India. Dr. McKague is the author of Making Markets More Inclusive (Palgrave) and has published in major management journals. A former member of the Board of Governors of York University, Kevin also holds a senior research fellowship at the Centre for Peace, Democracy and Development at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Haris Mesinovic, Senior Associate
Haris Mesinovic is Senior Associate specializing in private sector development, public policy and evaluation. Based in Sarajevo, Mr. Mesinovic served as national consultant on the firm’s governance evaluation in Bosnia and Herzegovina for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. He has served in the Prime Minister’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina and as an advisor to the World Bank and International Finance Corporation. Mr. Mesinovic has taught English at the University of Sarajevo. He earned an MA in public policy from Kennedy School at Tufts University.
Lilly Nicholls, Senior Associate
Lilly Nicholls is Senior Associate specializing in poverty reduction, governance, development effectiveness and organizational learning. She has worked extensively in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Afghanistan. She served as the firm’s core team for the evaluation of the governance programming and mainstreaming of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Dr. Nicholls has hands-on experience in managing teams in conflict situations and transition processes. She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics, and works in English, Spanish and French. She is currently on leave from the firm, serving in a senior capacity with Global Affairs Canada.
Brian Rowe, Senior Associate
Brian Rowe is Senior Associate with the firm, specializing in NGO and social enterprise management and gender equality. Mr. Rowe has had a distinguished career in international development, NGO management, rural development and gender equality in the Americas, Africa and Asia. He directed the firm’s provincial governance project in Vietnam, served as a gender specialist on its microfinance project in Bangladesh, and led its evaluation of a major global human rights institution. Earlier in his career, Mr. Rowe held a number of management and program positions with the Canadian NGO Cuso and Inter Pares and as a community development officer with Algonquin College. He has worked in 30 countries around the world.
Kizzann Sammy, Senior Associate
Kizzann Sammy is a Senior Associate with the firm specializing in gender equality, economic development, citizen security and poverty reduction. She has served as a senior consultant for Jackson and Associates assignments on gender mainstreaming with the Caribbean Development Bank and development finance institutions in Belize, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia, and on women’s voice and leadership programming with Global Affairs Canada. Ms. Sammy has 20 years of experience in planning, implementing, and evaluating development projects in the Caribbean, and has served as project manager of major initiatives in land administration and municipal economic development. A member of the Canadian Association of International Development Professionals, she has earned certifications in emergency disaster communications and combating money laundering. Passionate about community empowerment and ethical leadership, she is a volunteer board member with RESET Society of Calgary and SHIFT!Caribbean. Ms. Sammy holds an MBA in economic crime and fraud management from Utica College and an MA in international development from the University of Denver. She divides her time between Calgary and Port of Spain.
David Spring, Senior Associate
David Spring is Senior Associate specializing in program design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation in South and Southeast Asia. A former director-general with the Canadian International Development Agency, now Global Affairs Canada, he has managed large-scale interventions in a wide range of sectors, including local governance, public sector management, human rights, rural development, energy, health, and the environment. He has directed major development cooperation programs in China, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan, and has had field postings in Indonesia and Tanzania. In his volunteer capacity, he serves on the Community Services Cabinet of the United Way of Ottawa and on the board of the Social Planning Council of Ottawa. Mr. Spring holds a Master’s degree in economic development from the University of British Columbia.
Rieky Stuart, Senior Associate
Rieky Stuart, Senior Associate, is a specialist in organizational strategy and change, gender equality, agriculture and rural development, and program evaluation and results-based management. She served as an advisor to the governance evaluation undertaken by the firm for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Her clients have included the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the Gates Foundation, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and CIDA/DFATD, now Global Affairs Canada. Ms. Stuart is a former executive director of Oxfam Canada and deputy director for the Canadian Council for International Cooperation. Prior to that, she held an appointment as associate professor at the Coady International Institute at St. Francis Xavier University. Fluent in English, French and Dutch, Ms. Stuart has served on the boards of the MacArthur Foundation as well as Canadian and international non-governmental organizations.
Paul Turcot, Senior Associate
Paul Turcot is Senior Associate specializing in civil society, governance, social development and program evaluation. As an advisor to Global Affairs Canada, AusAID, national governments and major NGOs, he has carried out extensive project management and evaluation work in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam in southeast Asia, and in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Togo in west Africa. Mr. Turcot led the firm’s review of Global Affairs Canada’s governance and civil society program in Burma and of the Burmese refugee camp management model on the Thai border. He works in English, French and the Thai language. He holds an M.Eng degree.
Arlene Wortsman, Senior Associate
Arlene Wortsman is Senior Associate specializing in labour market and human resource issues, with particular expertise in human resources in the health sector. She has over thirty years of experience in developing and managing complex research and consultation projects. She has provided expert advice to the public, private and not-for-profit sectors in a number of areas, including workforce development, skills training and learning, labour market and workplace issues, HR management, organizational transformation and change management. She has undertaken numerous strategic planning and priority setting exercises, the development of human resource plans, program evaluations and environmental scans.
Brian Carriere, Associate
Dr. Brian Carriere is an Associate of the firm. In 2015-2016, Dr. Carriere was the lead researcher for the firm’s study on innovative finance and impact investing for sustainable development, carried out for Danida. This enabled him to become familiar with the many possible roles foundations from both the Global North and South can play in deploying their capital to advance the SDGs in developing countries, including various types of participation in impact-oriented funds by the Calvert, Cisco, Elma, Elumelu, Gates, Gatsby, IBM International, Hewlett, Lundin, Packard, Posner-Wallace, and Waterloo foundations. Dr. Carriere has also undertaken research on governance, impact investing, women and youth entrepreneurship as a researcher, policy analyst and program officer for Universities Canada and the Centre on Governance at the University of Ottawa. He is currently a Senior Program Officer at Colleges and Institutes Canada, an international leader in education for employment with ongoing programs in over 25 countries. Dr. Carriere holds a PhD in Public Administration. His dissertation investigated federal policy options for advancing impact investing in Canada. Dr. Carriere also holds an MA in Conflict Studies.
Jacob Jackson, Associate
Mr. Jacob Jackson is an Associate with the firm. A social entrepreneur and health-technology innovator, he is co-founder of HiNT, a start-up that has developed a wearable device for patients prone to strokes. Mr. Jackson currently directs business development for MedStack, a digital health start-up platform. He has also worked as a research assistant with research centres on addictions at McMaster University and on neuroscience and medical imaging at the University of British Columbia. In addition, Mr. Jackson has field experience as a healthcare volunteer at a regional hospital and in a remote community in northern Ghana, where his passion for impact investing and healthcare in developing nations emerged. He earned a master’s degree in entrepreneurship and engineering at McMaster University. A physics graduate and mathematics specialist, he has strong quantitative analytic skills.
Refilwe K. Mokoena, Associate
Refilwe Mokoena is an Associate of the firm, based in South Africa. For more than a decade, she has carried out a wide range of monitoring and evaluation assignments, including in development finance and impact investing, women’s microfinance and women’s entrepreneurship, holding appointments with the Graca Machel Trust, GreaterCapital, World Vision and the Small Enterprise Foundation. She has also taught impact investing evaluation and monitoring at the Bertha Centre in the Graduate Business School at the University of Cape Town and for pilot offerings of the Rockefeller Foundation-supported executive course on evaluating impact investing. An active volunteer, she serves on the board of directors of the Small Enterprise Foundation and as a mentor for DreamGirls International. Ms. Mokoena is presently completing her Master’s degree in public sector monitoring and evaluation at the University of the Witwatersrand.
David Monk, Associate
David Monk, Associate, is an engaged scholar based at Gulu University in Uganda, where he serves as Supervisor in the Institute for Peace, and Coordinator of the UNESCO Community-Based Research Hub, and supervises students in conflict transformation studies, governance and ethics. His areas of specialization include lifelong learning, youth and work in post-conflict areas; education program development; adult environmental education; and Indigenous knowledge systems. Dr. Monk currently carries out research in northern Uganda on digital portfolios, Indigenous pedagogy, and vocational education in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals. He earned a PhD in education from the University of Victoria.
Aneta Nowakowska-Besada, Associate
Aneta Nowakowska-Besada is an Associate with the firm, specializing in economic development, access to credit and gender equality. Between 2016 and 2018, her research supported mid-term evaluations by Jackson and Associates of the Mastercard Foundation’s Scholars Program on seven North American campuses. Ms. Nowakowska-Besada has worked as an evaluator and auditor for the Government of Canada, and has also carried out research on women and credit in Rwanda for the University of Ottawa, on manufacturing policy in Ethiopia for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, and, for the University of Ottawa, on China’s economic engagement in Africa. She has advanced skills in econometrics, probability and statistics, and social data and mathematical economics. Ms. Nowakowska-Besada holds an MA in economics from the University of Ottawa. She works in English, French and Polish.
Peter O’Flynn, Associate
An Associate of the firm, Peter O’Flynn is a consultant and researcher specializing in impact investment, development finance and impact assessment. In his capacity as Research Officer with the Institute of Development Studies, he participates in the CDC-DFID Longitudinal Study (2017-2027) on CDC’s mobilization of private capital and has provided research services to other IDS projects, including an evaluation of the poverty impacts of Swedfund, the monitoring of smallholder agricultural value chains in Africa, the social impacts of venture capital in Ghana, and ongoing advisory work on participation in impact investment for the Open Societies Foundations. Mr. O’Flynn has co-authored notable reports, articles, working papers and blogs generated from these initiatives. Based in London, he holds a BSc. in Economics from the University of York and a MSc. in Development Economics and Policy from the University of Manchester.
Crystal Tremblay, Associate
An Associate with the firm, Dr. Crystal Tremblay is a community-engaged scholar with over a decade of international experience in the field of environmental sustainability, participatory governance, youth engagement and livelihood enhancement, and Indigenous issues. Currently teaching at Victoria and Royal Roads universities, she has provided consulting services to development and funding agencies, foundations, higher education institutions, and civil society organizations, including: project design and implementation, monitoring and evaluation, applied and participatory research, training, capacity-development and knowledge mobilization. Dr. Tremblay brings a set of leading-edge skills and experiences aimed at strengthening the effectiveness of policies, programs and projects undertaken by these agencies. A fluent Portuguese speaker, she has worked in Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania.
Ellyn Clost-Lambert, Researcher
Ellyn Clost-Lambert is a Researcher specializing youth education and training, youth cultures, community engagement, workshop facilitation, qualitative research methods and Indigenous youth programming. Currently a Community Relations Facilitator with the non-profit Pathways to Education, in Kingston, Ontario, she has served as an Adult Ally for a group of 30 settler and Indigenous adults and youth participating in a cultural exchange between Kingston and Yellowknife. In an earlier assignment, she provided administrative support to the training activities of the Institute for Policy Alternatives in Tamale, northern Ghana. The holder of an MA in Cultural Studies from Queen’s University, Ms. Clost-Lambert has published on visual representation in international volunteering.
Sophia Duncan, Researcher
A Researcher with the firm, Sophia Duncan specializes in sustainable food and agriculture, agricultural co-operatives, social-purpose businesses and rural, Arabic-speaking communities. In addition to working in North America with youth and food non-profits, Ms. Duncan has served as a Fulbright Fellow in Morocco, where she researched traditional food products in that country, engaging with stakeholders associated with more than ten rural cooperatives. She can work in the English, French and Arabic languages. Ms. Duncan is currently completing her MBA at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
Grace Lyn Higdon, Researcher
Grace Lyn Higdon is a Researcher with the firm. A global-development professional with nearly a decade of experience in Africa and North America, she specializes in the use of participatory methods to enhance organizational effectiveness in the research, design, monitoring and evaluation of development interventions. The co-author of an innovative blog series at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) on participatory impact investment, Ms. Higdon has worked with IDS on building an evidence base for how participation can be integrated into the economic advancement process. She has also worked with Oxfam Great Britain on mobile feedback tools in humanitarian assistance, and in Rwanda on research on fathers and manhood, food security in post-election Kenya, and peace-building among youth in California. Interested in building bridges between traditional social-change actors and new entrants such as impact investors and technologists, Ms. Higdon holds an MA in participation, power and social change from the Institute of Development Studies.
Sonja Vanek, Secretary
Sonja Vanek has served as secretary for Jackson and Associates for more than 20 years, providing administrative support to the firm’s major projects in all parts of the world. She is familiar with the reporting, publishing and communications systems of a wide range of clients, including Digital Opportunity Trust, Global Affairs Canada, the Rockefeller Foundation, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, WUSC and many other government agencies and non-governmental organizations. Ms. Vanek’s expertise is in word processing, desktop publishing, website management and graphics. She is responsible for the formatting and production of documents and reports, and the maintenance of the company website.