Sally has over 20 years of experience working to promote gender equality and support women and girls’ empowerment, primarily through the generation and use of evidence. She has a particular interest in capturing complex processes of social change and in research ethics, believing that the most reliable and informative evidence is generated when participants feel respected, valued and in control of research and evaluation processes. Sally is committed to maximising the potential of research and evaluation to inform future decisionmaking and the effectiveness of development interventions. Her experience of designing and commissioning projects and programmes means she is skilled at combining academic principles and standards with a practical and realistic focus on how and why evidence will be used. Her work has ranged from rapid desk-based reviews to leading multi-year studies and evaluations, including a randomised control trial on violence prevention programming in partnership with Columbia University.
Sally has a solid understanding of the intersections between different forms of exclusion and inequality, particularly gender and disability, and she brings this lens to all of her work. She had the privilege to serve as a trustee and Deputy Chair of the INGO, Action on Disability and Development (ADD International), for many years where she worked alongside, and learnt from, members of national, regional and global disability movements.
Sally is an experienced team leader with a proven track record in delivering high quality work. She consistently receives excellent feedback from clients, ranging from donors, UN agencies, national governments, NGOs and development banks. The organisation she has worked most consistently with has been the former UK Department for International Development (DFID) and now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). This has included a number of long-term secondments, including as DFID’s Joint-Lead Advisor on addressing Violence Against Women and Girls, and as the Social Development Adviser in DFID’s former Research Department. More recently, Sally has worked as the Mixed Method Lead within the FCDO-funded Girls’ Education Challenge Fund and as joint Evidence Lead within FCDO’s Safeguarding Resource and Support Hub, which included conducting a 12-month review of evidence related to sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment (SEAH) in the aid sector.
Sally has an MA in Gender and Development from the Institute of Development Studies, based at the University of Sussex in the UK. Her career initially began in India and she has since worked extensively in Africa and Asia, as well as Europe and the Caribbean.
