Francis O.

Mr. Okello has 23 years of experience in research, monitoring and evaluation (RM&E), and management of projects in health (reproductive health, HIV, malaria, health systems and financing, hypertension), economic growth, democracy and governance, alternative livelihoods and resilience. He has core competencies in implementation science, knowledge management, project management, strategic planning, and the integration of Collaboration, Learning and Adapting (CLA) approach to the implementation of USAID-funded activities. He currently serves as the Chief of Party for the Ethiopia Performance Monitoring and Evaluation Service Activity (EPMES) implemented by Social Impact. In this capacity, he leads a team that supports USAID/Ethiopia with (i) independent evaluations of the Mission activities; (ii) monitoring, capacity building of USAID, implementing partners and local firms in monitoring, evaluation and learning; (iii) USAID country strategy development; (iv) design and implementation of the Missions’ CLA strategy and Knowledge Management system; and (v) with organizational capacity development. He was previously the Deputy Research Director for USAID’s global SHOPS project, later promoted to Principal Associate at Abt Associates where he continued to lead the monitoring and evaluation of SHOPS activity. He was Principal Investigator for the evaluation of a hypertension project in Kenya. Mr. Okello also worked with FHI 360-Ethiopia in various capacities: as Chief of Party (COP) for the PROGRESS project, Deputy Country Director/COP PROGRESS Project, and Country Director/COP PROGRESS project. The PROGRESS project/Ethiopia provided technical assistance to Ethiopia’s Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) to build capacity for research and M&E of family planning interventions. Mr. Okello assisted the FMoH to strengthen M&E systems at the national, regional, district and facility levels and conducted critical research on family planning initiatives. He was a member of the Family Planning and the prevention of mother-to-child (PMTCT) transmission of HIV working groups and contributed to the development of national guidelines on these two areas. Additionally, he provided technical support to the FMoH Health Management Information System design and data quality assessments. As Deputy Country Director and later Country Director for FHI 360/Ethiopia, Mr. Okello also provided technical and managerial leadership to the Highly Vulnerable Children (HVC) project, an HIV prevention workplace program and the in-school youth behavior change projects. Before working in Ethiopia, Mr. Okello was Senior Technical Officer for Strategic information with FHI 360, based in the US. In this capacity, he provided backstopping support to projects in South Africa, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. Mr. Okello’s past career also includes work for Chemonics International (USA) as Director for Project Planning and Monitoring, Populations Services International (Uganda) as the country Research Manager and Research International East Africa Limited as the Country Manager for the Uganda office. He has extensive technical and managerial experience in RM&E, project implementation and management, capacity building in RM&E at the national and community levels, technical assistance related to RM&E, data quality assurance (DQA) and financial and technical management of development projects. His country experience spans sub-Saharan Africa and Asia countries.