Victoria is a social development specialist with extensive experience in providing technical advice, research and evaluation services on gender equality and social inclusion. She has a proven track record of employing her expertise on qualitative research and analysis, strategy development, programme implementation and M&E, particularly in the fields of governance, voice and accountability; women’s and young people’s empowerment; gender-based violence (GBV) and violence against women and girls (VAWG); and sexual and reproductive health and rights. She has worked with a range of clients and donor agencies (including FCDO, the World Bank, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and UN agencies), and national and INGOs. Having lived in Kenya and Singapore, Victoria focuses on sub-Saharan Africa and South/Southeast Asia in much of her work.
As a Senior Associate for SDDirect, Victoria has been a Gender and Social Inclusion Coordinator for FCDO's Conflict, Stability and Security Fund’s West Africa portfolio, to strengthen the sensitivity of programme design and results frameworks to gender equality and social inclusion (GESI); a Strategic Adviser for the STAR Ghana Foundation on GESI and movement building; and a Consultant for the UK Aid Connect Evidence and Collaboration for Inclusive Development initiative in Myanmar. She has also been a Consultant for the World Bank in Kenya on research regarding economic violence and asset dispossession, as well as on community perceptions and quality of GBV prevention and response services. Victoria further co-designed the GESI component of the evaluation of the five-year £1.3 billion UK Cross-Government Prosperity Fund; and was a long-standing contributor of varied rapid research and global evidence reviews for the former DFID VAWG Helpdesk.
Prior to becoming an independent consultant, Victoria was a full-time staff member at SDDirect, where she provided her expertise on a range of long-term programmes, such as:
- DFID’s £350 million Girls’ Education Challenge Fund;
- The multi-donor DFID Strengthening Transparency, Accountability and Responsiveness (STAR) Ghana Phase 2 programme;
- DFID Nigeria’s flagship programme Voices for Change, focused on strengthening the enabling environment for women and girls' empowerment;
- DFID’s Strengthening Community-led Monitoring and Accountability to Improve Service Delivery in Sierra Leone (SABI);
- DFID DRC’s adolescent girls and young women-centred economic empowerment programme La Pepiniere;
- DFID Somalia’s Implementation and Analysis in Action of Accountability Programme.
She also undertook discrete research, for example to explore good practice for the innovative Strategic Partnership Arrangement between BRAC, DFID and DFAT; and a study on the links between comprehensive sexuality education, gender equality and VAWG for Plan International UK, for which she led the in-country qualitative data collection in Uganda.
Previously, Victoria held advisory and research posts with BRAC UK, and gender departments and programming at the German development agency Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in Germany and Morocco. She is fluent in English and German and has intermediate knowledge of French. She holds an MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation from London School of Economics and Political Science.
