Jen Steele

I have functional expertise in training, facilitating, and mentoring; humanitarian response; programming at the triple nexus; strategic planning; participatory (child-friendly) research; evidence-based policy advocacy; remote management; and programme design. I have technical expertise covering pre-primary through lower secondary education focused on social behaviour change communication; inclusive education; curriculum development ; non-formal and accelerated education; community-based education; low-cost private schooling; digital and offline distance education; supporting internally displaced school-age children affected by conflict; and teacher and student wellbeing. I have nearly 25 years of experience in 18 countries across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. I have experience in humanitarian response in Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, the occupied Palestinian Territories, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey, and Uganda; post-crisis context experience in Indonesia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania; and low-income context experience in Bangladesh, Benin, Ethiopia, Kenya, Peru, and Ukraine. In 2016, I founded equitas education, a consulting firm that provides technical advice for education in crisis-affected and low-income contexts. As its Principal Consultant, I lead teams providing the following services to clients: programme and strategic design, research, evidence-based policy advocacy, and programme implementation services. Clients of equitas education have included the NRC, IRC, Plan International, Save the Children, UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Food Programme. Donors supporting this work have included Education Cannot Wait, the EU, FCDO, the Global Partnership for Education, Sesame Workshop, and USAID. Between 2001 and 2016, I was a programme manager and technical advisor for organisations such as the IRC, Right To Play, Save the Children, and War Child Holland. I am the author of five peer-reviewed publications.