Emma is the Head of the Governance and Inclusive Societies Portfolio, which houses SDDirect’s work on health; disability inclusion; women’s political participation; women, peace, and security; and governance, voice, and accountability.
Emma is a Senior Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) Advisor on several of the portfolio multi-year programmes. These have included the UK Aid Connect Evidence and Collaboration for Inclusive Development (ECID) programme in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Myanmar; the FCDO Civil Society Support Programme Phase Two (CSSP2) in Ethiopia; the FCDO Strengthening Accountability and Building Inclusion (SABI) programme in Sierra Leone; and the FCDO Strengthening Transparency, Accountability and Responsiveness (STAR) programme in Ghana. She is also a Senior Advisor and Strategic Lead for FCDO’s Disability Inclusion Helpdesk. She is extremely passionate about ensuring programming is locally led.
Emma also has an excellent track record in monitoring and evaluation – she has carried out several mid-term and end-term evaluations, conducted baselines, scoping studies and situational analyses, and worked closely with clients to address more complex issues around the theory of change. Emma has been integral to developing in-house tools to measure GESI responsiveness within organisations and programmes, including GESI audits and progress markers. One of her key contributions has been to lead the development of our institutional GESI-aware political economy analysis approach called Gender, Inclusion, Power and Politics (GIPP) Analysis. The GIPP Toolkit was formally launched in August 2020.
Emma is also SDDirect’s Ethics Lead, supporting the development and revision of institutional policies and guidelines, and managing an internal advisory group.
Emma grew up in various parts of the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and although she now calls England home, she is passionate about taking her daughter travelling to the countries that hold a special place in her heart. Emma also has extensive field experience in various parts of East and West Africa, Central America, and other parts of Asia. As well as being an avid traveller, Emma loves wild swimming and cooking.
