What is The MERL Tech Initiative?

Bárbara Paes is a researcher and project manager, with a decade of experience working with civil society organisations, 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

Quito Tsui 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 organisations 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.

Sarah Osman 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 Stevenson has worked for over 20 years with (I)NGOs, UN agencies, foundations and sports bodies to strengthen safeguarding practices. Sarah has supported organizations in developing and/or reviewing policies and procedures including survivor/victim centered response protocols, developing guidance and tools and designing and facilitating training. Sarah is currently a freelancer with FIFA, supporting the work of their safeguarding team and consults as the US Safeguarding Advisor for the Funders Safeguarding Collaborative.  

Savita Bailur is Senior Director of Gender Equality & Social Inclusion at Caribou Digital. She’s worked on 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 an adjunct Associate Professor in digital development at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University and 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.  

Stephanie Coker 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.

Zach Tilton 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.