James M. Statman

I am a senior international development practitioner with thirty years’ experience in the design, implementation and evaluation of USAID projects and programs, with a focus on youth development, non-formal/vocational education and training, basic education and monitoring and evaluation. I am currently Chief of Party of the South Sudan Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Activity (MELS), providing overall technical and administrative leadership of a team of more than sixty based in Juba and in 13 field sites. MELS delivers extensive community-based participatory monitoring and traditional third-party monitoring; conducts assessments, evaluations and special research studies; provides GIS-support, resilience measurement and monitoring, data management support, knowledge management and institutional learning services. From 2020-2022, I served as Chief of Party of the South Sudan Monitoring and Evaluation Support Project (MESP), where I supervise a staff of 25+ in the conduct of third party monitoring including remote TPM; the conduct of performance evaluations and sector assessments, surveys and research studies; data quality assessments; support for the Mission's CLA activities and other strategic communications services. From 2016-2019 I served as Chief of Party for the Northern Nigeria Education Initiative Plus (NEIPlus) project, a large activity implemented in twenty local government areas in Northern Nigeria, funded at $117 million; have also twice served as COP in Zimbabwe (on a youth development, livelihoods and violence mitigation project and a national HIV/AIDS behavior change program), and in South Africa on an education and youth development/vocational training program and as Interim COP on a health systems reform project in Albania. I have been Team Leader on numerous USAID final performance evaluations and program design activities including Azerbaijan (twice), Egypt, Ethiopia, Kosovo, Liberia, South Africa and Tunisia.