MTI Core Collaborators
The MERL Tech Initiative’s core collaborators hold deep experience with emerging tech, digitally-enabled programs and holistic monitoring, evaluation, research and learning (MERL). Our expertise in a range of critical MERL-adjacent areas helps us ensure integrated thinking. These areas include digital strategy and digital transformation; formative research; human centered digital design, behavioral design; data governance, data privacy policy and practice, trust and safety, safeguarding, digital risk assessment, and digital inclusion with a focus on gender, youth and historically marginalized groups. Contact us to chat about working together!
Individual collaborators
Bárbara Paes
Bárbara (she/her) is a researcher and project manager, with a decade of experience working with civil society organizations, most often on issues related to social justice, power and technology. Previously, she has worked with organizations such as Article 19 Brazil, Glitch UK, and The Engine Room on topics such as freedom of information, tech-facilitated gender-based violence, information disorder and responsible data. Bárbara is also the co-founder of Instituto Minas Programam, where she creates spaces for Black Brazilian girls/women to learn about technology through feminist and anti-racist perspectives. She is MTI’s Community Manager for the NLP-CoP.
Cathy Richards
Cathy is a technologist who helps activists, organizations, and other social change agents make the most of data and technology in order to increase their impact. She is currently the Data and Technology Lead at Open Environmental Data Project. She previously worked at The Engine Room, taught Metrics & Data Visualization at SVA, co-founded Pueblo CoLab – a collaborative that creates tech and data processes for the social sector, and worked at GitLab and Keystone Accountability. Cathy is co-lead of the Climate Learning Group within MTI’s AI Community of Practice.
Christopher Robert
Chris (he/him) has been developing software for the MERL Tech Sector for over a decade, including the creation of SurveyCTO. His company, Higher Bar AI, provides a wide range of AI adoption support services, from experimentation and evaluation of proofs of concept all the way through to continuous monitoring of deployed solutions for safety and efficacy. Chris and the Higher Bar AI team combine a strong facility with the new GenAI technical stack with a keen interest in safety, impact, and security. Chris supports MTI with deep AI technological expertise.
Emeka Nwankwo
Emeka (he/him) has spent more than two decades working at the intersection of strategy and evaluation, with a particular focus on innovative ways to assess impact and causality, and to understand the social returns of financing and blended investments. A central thread in his work is redefining what success and impact mean across different cultural contexts. After leaving the Mastercard Foundation in 2023 as Director of Impact (Country Programmes), he now advises development agencies, philanthropies, and governments on strengthening cultures of inquiry, evidence, learning, and accountability. Emeka provides MTI with strategic advisory and quality assurance on MEL.
Grace Lyn Higdon
Grace (she/her) is a strategic advisor helping philanthropies and investors to navigate complexity through innovative learning and impact approaches that strengthen rather than burden their work. For over 15 years, Grace has brought a combination of practical field experience and academic rigor to develop MERL systems that integrate right-fit, responsible digital tools. Prior to co-founding a consulting practice in 2022, she honed her expertise using participatory and tech-enabled methods within an array of international programs at the Institute of Development Studies in Brighton, UK. Grace has co-authored pieces with MTI on the use of LLMs in evaluation and assessing AI vendors during procurement. She co-leads the NLP CoP’s Ethics and Governance Working Group.
Isabelle Amazon-Brown
Isabelle (she/her) is a digital development consultant and human centered designer focused on the design, development, evaluation, and growth of digital social impact products, youth, gender, sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR), and education. Issie has researched the effectiveness of digital social and behavior change (SBC) programming and advised organizations on digital work with hard-to-reach communities. She developed the Safer Chatbots guidelines and AI model for UNICEF and led an evaluation of WHO’s use of chatbots for COVID response and multiple AI and non-AI chatbots for users in vulnerable settings. Issie is MTI’s SBC lead, and she also co-leads MTI’s AI ethics and governance work.
Kerry Bruce
Kerry (she/her) is the CEO of ClearUp Consulting, a woman-owned technical firm that works across sectors to provide monitoring, evaluation, research and learning services with a focus on emerging technologies. With over 30 years of global experience in public health and international development, she brings deep expertise in quantitative and qualitative methods, AI for evaluation, and digital health. Kerry serves on MTI’s NLP-CoP Steering Committee and has led work comparing LLM-assisted and traditional qualitative coding approaches. She is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, where she teaches courses in monitoring, evaluation, data analysis and the use of AI in MEL
Kelly Church
Kelly Church is a digital transformation consultant and program leader with 12+ years of experience helping mission-driven organizations adopt technology responsibly and effectively. She has led initiatives spanning AI governance, responsible data policy, cybersecurity, and change management for federal agencies and international organizations — including a bureau-wide digital transformation at USAID and data governance assessments with five Ministries of Health across Africa. Through her work with the MERL Tech Initiative, she supports the development and rollout of data and AI policies, delivering training and change management grounded in stakeholder buy-in from the start and designed to work for everyone they affect. She holds an MA in Law & Diplomacy from Tufts University’s Fletcher School.
Kevin Hong
Kevin (he/him) is a data-driven social innovator whose career has spanned NGOs, social enterprises, US government, and philanthropy. Most recently, Kevin was the Director of Evaluation at Wellspring Philanthropic Fund which invested in advancing human rights and social justice. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor, teaching courses on monitoring and evaluation, at School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University. He holds a Master in International Affairs from SIPA and graduated from Cornell University with summa cum laude in Computational and Systems Biology. He is an emotional support human to a loving but anxious dog, Macy, and lover of the outdoors and spicy food.
Linda Raftree
Linda (she/her) founded the MERL Tech Initiative (MTI) in 2014, building on two decades of work at the intersection of community development, gender, youth participatory media, rights-based approaches and digital development. She is a well-known expert on responsible data approaches, AI policy and governance, inclusive digital approaches, safeguarding and safe tech-enabled program design, and MERL Tech. Linda excels at organizational and sector strategy in times of political flux and technological change. She runs sector-wide convenings through MTI and the New York City Technology Salon, which she started in 2011. Linda is a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP & CIPM). She also serves on CDAC’s SAFE AI Pool of Experts and teaches AI and MERL at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Linda leads and manages MTI overall, joins MTI teams for specific projects, and takes on independent projects in her areas of expertise.
Quito Tsui
Quito (she/her) is a researcher and writer with expertise on technology in the context of the humanitarian and development sectors. She has a keen interest in the development of a technological environment rooted in justice with practical experience of supporting organizations to this end. She previously led research on digital identity, biometrics, interoperability and environmental justice at The Engine Room. She has also conducted academic research at the University of Cambridge, Stanford University and the London School of Economics. Quito’s writing has been featured in the Forced Migration Review (Oxford University), Bot Populi and The Nation and her work has been cited by outlets such as Access Now and Geographical. Quito is MTI’s humanitarian AI lead and supports MTI’s research initiatives.
Sarah Osman
Sarah (she/her) is a behavioral scientist and cognitive psychologist with two decades of experience in international development and social and behavior change interventions. Sarah has worked in the areas of health, migration, peacebuilding, children’s rights, education, and business and human rights, to deliver bespoke and innovative solutions. She is a member of the Behavioural Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) network. Sarah focuses on the strategic use of AI, and recently built the SBC Technique Selector GPT in November 2023 to help project designers easily identify evidence-based behavior change techniques. Sarah co-leads the NLP-CoP SBC Working Group and provides related support.
Savita Bailur
Savita (she/her) works at the intersection of gender and digital use (including community radio and telecentres), gig work, digital identity, digital financial inclusion and most recently, Generative AI. Her clients have included the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mastercard Foundation, Omidyar Network, UN Women, UNICEF, Vodafone Foundation and the World Bank while at Caribou. She is the former Senior Director of Gender Equality & Social Inclusion at Caribou Digital and current adjunct Associate Professor in digital development at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. She holds a PhD and MSc in Information Systems from the London School of Economics as well as degrees from the University of London and University of Cambridge. Savita leads MTI’s AI and Gender Inclusion work.
Stephanie Coker
Stephanie (she/her) is an experienced learning and evaluation professional who applies her international development, public health, and policy background to evaluating organizations seeking to deepen their social impact. Stephanie is deeply experienced in theory of change development and developmental evaluation frameworks. She thinks critically about how organizations can more effectively work towards achieving outcomes. Currently, Stephanie serves in multiple roles as a Steering Committee Member and SBC co-lead of the NLP Community of Practice, an internal evaluator for a public health philanthropy, and the founder of Aya Innovative Solutions.
Varaidzo Faith Magodo-Matimba
Vari (she/her) is a pan-African feminist lawyer, decolonial funding advocate, and curator of the inaugural Afrofeminist Data Museum. She holds an Executive Postgraduate Diploma in Development Policies and Practices from the Geneva Graduate Institute. Her work focuses on human rights program design at the intersection of feminist tech policy, data governance, and digital inclusion in Africa. She has supported movement building, strategy, governance, compliance, and resource mobilization across West, Southern, and Eastern Africa. Vari is MTI’s AI in Africa lead.
Zach Tilton
Zach (he/him) is an evaluation consultant with experience in peacebuilding evaluation, youth-focused evaluation, participatory and collaborative evaluation, meta-evaluation, evaluation synthesis, technology- enabled evaluation, AI-enabled evaluation, and evaluation capacity development. He is active with the EvalYouth Global Network and various evaluation associations. Zach’s field experience spans North and West Africa, South East Asia, and the Pacific with over two years of development experience in rural communities. He is currently finishing a PhD in evaluation and has been using NLP as a core tool in his work. Zach supports MTI on AI in Evaluation work.
Organizational collaborators
iMedia Associates
iMedia is a UK-based international media and communications company led by Nicola Harford, that promotes innovative approaches – increasingly via digital platforms and AI – to tackling communications challenges presented by conflict, fragile governance, ill-health and poverty. We deliver and disseminate high-quality advisory, research and analysis to our clients and partners. Our network of associates facilitates skills-building, knowledge-sharing, and local ownership to enhance communications resilience and create lasting social and behavioral change.
Center for Transformational Change
Led by Lina Srivastava, the Center fosters community power through ethical and effective narrative strategies. The Center collaborates with leaders in civil society, the creative sector, the social impact sector, and social movements to catalyze community-led social transformation and systems change in the areas of migrant rights, climate justice, gender and racial equity, and civic and cultural participation, through social impact strategy, convening design, and media production. We curate local knowledge, create impactful stories, and provide tools while collaborating globally to redefine leadership and shape narratives for sustainable social transformation.
Tech Legality
Tech Legality is a women-led consulting company founded by Emma Day and Dr Sabine K Witting. They work with governments, UN agencies, technology companies, and (I)NGOs to ensure that technologies are deployed and governed in a way that protects and respects human rights, centering the needs of children, and vulnerable and marginalized communities. Tech Legality also leads the Community of Practice on Technology and Human Rights which aims to provide a collaborative space for members to discuss trust and safety topics from a human rights perspective.
Technology Salon
Tech Salon hosts intimate, informal, in-person discussions among information and communication technology exerts and international development and humanitarian professionals to tackle tough topics in a safe space that sparks opportunities for cross-sector, multidisciplinary learning and new partnerships. Salons also serve as sounding board and focus group discussion opportunities for emerging topics in ICT4D and social media for social change. Technology Salon is The MERL Tech Initiative’s non-profit (501c3) partner for managing grant funding.
BOLTECH
Boltech is a cybersecurity firm specializing in crafting personalized solutions to safeguard individuals and organizations from digital threats. With deep roots in Sub-Saharan Africa, we provide expert services to journalists, human rights defenders, and social justice organizations across the region and globally. Our extensive experience, spanning the Horn of Africa to Europe and The Americas, ensures we deliver context-aware and effective digital defense.