The Evaluation Reference Group (ERG) will work with the Evaluation Function Lead, under the oversight of the Director, IAES Secretariat, to provide expert input to IAES Evaluation Function as it implements its approved 2022-24 workplan. Detailed group objectives and related responsibilities align with the workplan, and available to the public upon request. IAES will revise the reference group terms of reference periodically as necessary, in accordance with adaptive management principles.
ERG Members
Sonal Zaveri
Sonal Zaveri has over 30 years’ experience in strategic planning, program design, capacity building, mentoring, and evaluation. She has a Ph.D. in Social Work and was a Fleishman Fellow at Duke University, USA. She has worked in more than 25 countries in Asia, Asia-Pacific, and Central Asia, East and West Africa, Middle East, and Eastern Europe at grassroots, sub-national, national, regional, and international levels bringing a broad contextual experience.
She holds regional and global leadership positions - founder and board member of Community of Evaluators South Asia; coordinator of the Gender & Equity Network South Asia (GENSA); co-chair EvalGender+, member of the EvalPartners Coordination Committee, board member of the International Evaluation Academy (IEAc), and a core member of the South to South Evaluation (S2SE), which addresses asymmetries in global evaluation.
Sonal’s interests relate to how rights, participation, transformation, and gender are addressed through collaborative, culturally responsive, and learning-oriented evaluation approaches, and methodologies.
Guy Poppy
Professor Guy Poppy served as the UK’s Food Standards Agency’s (FSA’s) Chief Scientific Adviser from 2014 to 2020. He continues with his research in global food security at the University of Southampton, where he is Professor of ecology and directs interdisciplinary research as the Associate Vice President. He was appointed Companion of the Order of Bath (CB) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2021.
He has significant research experience in food systems and food security and has advised governments around the world on these issues. He is currently a member of the Research Excellence Framework (REF2021) panel assessing the quality of agriculture, food, and veterinary science in the UK, having previously served on the REF2014 panel. He is a graduate of Imperial College and Oxford University, and previously worked at Rothamsted Research.
He focuses on connecting science to users and has pushed for scientists to be intelligent providers to intelligent customers of science.
Osvaldo Néstor Feinstein
Osvaldo Néstor Feinstein has over 40 years of experience as an evaluator and economist in Latin American & Caribbean countries, Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, France, Italy and Spain. Professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid’s Master in the Evaluation of Programs & Public Policies, editor of the Routledge Series “Advances in Evaluation and Development, editor/author of books and articles on evaluation, development and economics and peer reviewer of MOPAN assessments.
Former member of the International Advisory Panel of UNDP’s Independent Evaluation
Office, board member of the International Evaluation Academy, manager and adviser at the World Bank’s Evaluation Department, and senior evaluator at the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development. Former member of CGIAR’s Standing Panel on Monitoring and Evaluation, senior consultant with IDRC for the development and testing of the research quality plus assessment methodology and with several international and national organizations like the GEF, FAO, IFAD, IDB, AfDB, WBG, ILO, UNESCO, CLEAR-AA, AEVAL and Banque de France.
Ravinder Kumar
R Kumar (Ravi) is working as an Associate Professor (of monitoring and impact) at the Natural Resources Institute (University of Greenwich, UK). He has led and conducted numerous research, monitoring, and evaluation projects in sustainable forest management, agricultural value chains, food and nutrition security, poverty, livelihoods, ethical trade, social enterprises and innovations, responsible business investments, sustainability certification in agricultural commodities, and ocean and agriculture plastic. In over 25 years of experience across 16 countries, he has completed 100+ research, MEL systems, and evaluation assignments with small- and large-scale programs (including CGIAR centres) at single- and multi-country levels. Ravi has developed and implemented diverse evaluation methodologies, most involving mixed methods for data collection and analysis. He has actively engaged in innovations, systems, and practices for tackling/reducing ocean and agriculture plastics.
Roberto La Rovere
Roberto La Rovere is an independent evaluator. He previously worked at three CGIAR Centers in West and East Africa, Syria, and Mexico, being focal point for the Standing Panel on Impact Assessment (SPIA) and the Science Council until 2010. He has consulted extensively for the UN Rome-Based Agencies, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and for more than a decade he has been a senior evaluation advisor at UNDP, at the Green Climate Fund (GCF), and at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).
His research and science track led him to author above a hundred publications including a chapter on Evaluation of Climate Change, Environment and NRM in the CGIAR in the book titled Evaluating Environment in International Development. He holds a Ph.D. in natural resource management (NRM) economics, and degrees in development economics and agricultural sciences and systems as well as specializations in evaluation and climate change.
Roberto has interests in evaluation in development and humanitarian contexts and his evaluation and working experience cuts across multiple and diverse cultures as he has been based in Latin America, the Middle East, Far East Asia, and in most regions of Africa. He strongly believes in the transformative power of evaluation for catalyzing organizational learning and change and for greater impact.