Staff Directory
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Senior Program Specialist |
613-696-2302 |
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Senior Program Specialist - Strategic Outreach |
613-696-2236 |
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Senior Program Officer |
91-11-2461-9411 ext. 7601 |
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Senior Program Officer |
254-20-2713160 ext. 3407 |
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Senior Program Officer |
254-20-2713160 ext. 3105 |
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Senior Program Officer |
221-33-864-0000 ext. 7706 |
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Senior Program Officer |
91-11-2461-9411 ext. 7401 |
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Program Officer |
598-2-709-0042 ext. 3210 |
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Program Officer |
598-2-709-0042 ext. 3259 |
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Program Officer |
221-33-864-0000 ext. 7733 |
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Communication and Learning Officer |
613-696-2339 |
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Program Assistant |
613-696-2290 |
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Katy Stockton
Ottawa, Canada |
Program Management Officer |
613-696-2125 |
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 Peter Taylor
Senior Program Specialist
Peter Taylor is a Senior Program Specialist for the Think Tank Initiative. Before joining IDRC, Peter was the Leader of the Participation, Power and Social Change Team, at the Institute of Development Studies where he spent the last 6 years. Prior to that, he worked as a technical advisor for the Swiss development cooperation NGO Helvetas, and as a lecturer at the AERDD at the University of Reading, UK. Peter has a background and doctorate in agricultural education. He has worked, published and taught on the theory and practice of capacity development in international contexts, the role of education systems and institutions in participatory and social change. He has particular interests in organisational learning and change, and programme evaluation. He has worked in many countries of the world, especially in East and Southern Africa and Central, South and South East Asia.
 Julie LaFrance
Senior Program Specialist - Strategic Outreach
Julie holds a Master’s degree in International Business Economics from Aalborg University in Denmark and an undergraduate degree in Business from Catawba College, North Carolina. Prior to joining the Think Tank Initiative, Julie was a consultant for 8 years with the International Finance Corporation in Washington, DC. Her role included building capacity of financial institutions and other financial sector stakeholders in emerging markets to integrate environmental and social considerations into their lending practices and develop new business in sustainable energy finance. She was responsible for managing grantees and raising donor funds for the Sustainable Financial Markets Facility from 2003 – 2007. She has worked for the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Thailand where she focused on resource mobilization and partnership development. Julie has worked for various institutions in Canada including McGill University and Oxfam Quebec.
 Kaveri Gill
Senior Program Officer
Kaveri Gill is a development economist and social scientist with expertise in poverty and deprivation; the informal sector; and the political economy of development and urbanization in emerging economies. Recently, she has worked on flagship government welfare schemes in India, especially in public health. Before joining IDRC, Gill spent a decade at Cambridge University, ending her academic study with a teaching fellowship during which she wrote the book Of Poverty and Plastic: Scavenging and Scrap Trading Entrepreneurs in India’s Urban Informal Economy. Subsequently, she worked for two years at the Planning Commission of India, in which time she designed and led an evaluation of the National Rural Health Mission. Gill has also developed a framework for the assessment of social exclusion in public service delivery schemes in the sectors of sanitation, integrated child development and reproductive health, for UNICEF India. Gill holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge.
 John Okidi
Senior Program Officer
Dr. John Okidi is a Senior Program Officer for the Think Tank Initiative based at IDRC’s Regional Office for Eastern and Southern Africa (Nairobi). He obtained a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 1997. John comes to IDRC from a Research Fellow position at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), working with IFPRI’s Ethiopia Strategy Support Program. Prior to joining IFPRI in May 2007 he served a six-year period as the Executive Director of the Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC) in Uganda. Before joining the EPRC in 1999 as a Senior Research Fellow, he was a consultant for one year at the Development Research Group of the World Bank in Washington, D.C. John has extensive experience in microeconomic policy analysis, especially with application to panel and time series of cross-sectional survey data. Accordingly, he has written and published in the areas of economic growth and the distributional and poverty impacts of macroeconomic policies.
 Paul Okwi
Senior Program Officer
Paul Okwi is a Senior Program Officer for the Think Tank Initiative based at IDRC’s Regional Office for Eastern and Southern Africa (Nairobi). Prior to joining IDRC, Paul worked for the World Bank in Kampala, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi and was a lecturer at Makerere University. Paul has a PhD in Economics from the University of Cape Town, and an MA in Economic Policy and Planning from Makerere University. He has published extensively on welfare and income inequality, poverty mappings, geographic determinants of poverty, and natural resource economics.
Senior Program Officer
Dr. Diakalia Sanogo is a Senior Program Officer for the Think Tank Initiative based at IDRC’s Regional Office for West and Central Africa (Dakar). He obtained a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Purdue University in the USA in 2001. Diakalia returns to IDRC after spending two years (May 2006 – July 2008) in the position of Impact Economist at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Ibadan, Nigeria. From September 2004 to March 2006, he served as Program Officer of the Secretariat for Institutional Support for Economic Research in Africa (SISERA) in Dakar. He has extensive experience in designing, implementing and evaluating agricultural research and development projects on a regional scale in Central and West Africa. He has a strong interest for research and development activities related to agricultural development, agricultural products market innovations and the development of competitive agro-industries, poverty analysis and microfinance.
Samar Verma is a Senior Program Officer for the Think Tank Initiative, based at IDRC’s Regional Office for South Asia in New Delhi. Samar obtained a PhD in Economics from Magadh University, Bihar, India. He comes from Oxfam GB, where he first joined as Trade Policy Advisor in March 2003. He progressed to South Asia Regional Policy Advisor in 2005 before finally moving on to lead their global economic justice policy group in March 2006 as Team Leader based at Oxford, UK. He is also the founding Executive Director of Centre for Trade and Development (Centad), a Delhi-based regional think tank. For two years prior to joining Oxfam GB, he worked as Senior Fellow with the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) in New Delhi, and published widely on international trade and competitiveness, particularly related to textiles. He began his professional career in the corporate sector in 1996, working as Economist and Project Manager with cotton textile conglomerate Arvind Mills in India. He has written and published in the areas of trade and competitiveness. Watch Samar discuss the Think Tank Initiative in South Asia in this video: Here.
Program Officer
Carolina Robino is a Senior Program Officer with the Think Tank Initiative and a Research Officer with GGP and PAN Americas/Institute for Connectivity of the Americas. She is based in Montevideo at IDRC’s Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean. Her areas of interest include poverty and inequality analyses, decentralization, participation and local development, the research - policy interface and the policy formulation and implementation process. Prior to joining IDRC, she worked as a researcher and visiting lecturer at the Department of Development Studies of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa and at the School of Economics at the Universidad de la República (Uruguay). She holds a B.A in Economics from the Universidad de la República in Uruguay and a M.A. in Latin American Social and Political Studies from the Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Chile. She is currently a PhD candidate in Development Studies at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.
 Antonio Romero
Program Officer
Antonio Romero is a Program Officer for the Think Tank Initiative in Latin America. He is based in Montevideo at IDRC´s Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean. His research interests include policy processes of public management reforms, and competition policies in Latin America. Previously, he was a researcher and acting director of the Institute of Economic and Social Studies (IDIES) in Guatemala. He has worked for the government of Guatemala in the National Competitiveness Program at the Ministry of Economy, and as a consultant for the Economic Planning Secretariat. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Political Studies Department of the University of Auckland in New Zealand, holds an MBA Public Service from the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, and a Licentiate in Economics from the Rafael Landívar University in Guatemala.
 Flaubert Mbiekop
Program Officer
Flaubert Mbiekop Ouahouo has a Diplôme d’études approfondies in International Economics from the Programme de troisième cycle interuniversitaire, University of Yaoundé (1999), and a PhD in Economics from the Université du Québec à Montréal (2006). He has presented papers in South Africa, in Côte d’Ivoire and in the Central African Republic, as well as in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. In 2009, the International Institute of Public Finance and GTZ conveyed on him the first African Public Policy Award in recognition of his research on the question of reforming public institutions in Africa. He is also the author or co-author of several articles dealing with development and international trade, some of which have been published in prestigious reviews such as the Journal of Macroeconomics and the Trade and Development Review. Before joining IDRC in 2011 as Program Officer for the Supporting Inclusive Growth program and the Think Tank Initiative, he has taught at Cornell University and Drew University, in the United States, and the Université du Québec à Montréal, in Canada. He is based in IDRC’s Regional Office for West and Central Africa, in Dakar, Senegal.
 Maria Urbina-Fauser
Communication and Learning Officer
Maria Urbina-Fauser is the Think Tank Initiative’s Communication and Learning Officer. She holds a Master's Degree in International Development Studies from Saint Mary's University and an undergraduate degree in Economics and Latin American Studies from Simon Fraser University. Prior to joining the Think Tank Initiative, Maria was a Research Officer in the Partnerships and Business Development Division of IDRC where she was involved in the Capacity Building in Resource Mobilization Program, an initiative aiming to strengthen IDRC research partner institutions’ ability to mobilize resources and become more efficient, effective and sustainable organizations. She has worked in Potosi, Bolivia, coordinating an impact study of a large microfinance project, and in Havana, Cuba as a program officer for an environmental NGO. Maria has also worked with various institutions in Canada, including the University of British Columbia and Canadian Crossroads International.
Sara D’Arcy is the Think Tank Initiative’s Program Assistant. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, with a concentration in social problems, from McGill University. Prior to joining IDRC, Sara worked in business development for two Ottawa-based consulting companies, and in fundraising, research and development for both the Canadian Museum of Nature and the United Way. Sara has also worked in Korea where she taught English as a second language. Sara’s passion is in volunteering with children at risk and those affected by childhood cancer.
Program Management Officer
Katy Stockton is a Program Management Officer with the Think Tank Initiative. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from McGill University and a Master's degree in International Dimensions of Development from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. She has worked at the Canadian International Development Agency in the Strategic Planning division, and has spent time working in Tanzania on a participatory development project, and in Vietnam as a Research Assistant with a local NGO.
 Ahmed K. RashidResearch Award Recipient
Ahmed K. Rashid is the Research Award Recipient for the Think Tank Initiative. Before joining IDRC, Ahmed worked as the Research and Communications Officer for the Embassy of Switzerland/Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in Bangladesh from 2005 to 2010, where he was responsible for a wide range of research and communications activities. He was also a Program Specialist for the USAID-funded Local Government Initiative project, where he monitored grantee projects, conducted perception surveys, and organized capacity- building workshops. With the Think Tank Initiative, Ahmed will be providing program support and conducting research on patterns of donor engagement with think tanks in Bangladesh. Ahmed is completing his master’s degree in public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa. |
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