Conceptual Mastermind. Leader through Practice not Position. Facilitator and Synthesizer Extraordinaire. Make it Happen Powerhouse.

Monalisa has been a long-time thought leader and expert in international development and organizational learning before joining The Convive Collective. She began her career implementing and designing international development programs in the Middle East and East Africa and naturally drifted to asking the big questions about development effectiveness. She consults with The Convive Collective to help philanthropies understand their current organizational learning practices and facilitate planning to improve them for greater overall impact.

Mid-way into her career, Monalisa got the call to help the US Agency for International Development (USAID) become a more effective learning organization in order to improve its overall impact. This turned into an over ten year journey of creating USAID’s institutional framework and resources for organizational learning and adaptive management and applying those practices in programming with USAID/Vietnam.

Prior to consulting with Convive, Monalisa worked at Global Communities and Partners Global managing community development projects in Palestine, Lebanon, South Sudan, and Yemen and expanding work in the Middle East region during the Arab Spring. She went on to additional leadership positions with international development firms - including Dexis Consulting Group, Social Impact, and Banyan Global - focused on increasing the effectiveness of development programs through organizational learning practices. She wants to take what she applied in her 20 year international development career to the philanthropic sector with Convive.

Monalisa currently loves learning about: 

• How to be centered in times of chaos

• How to help people become aware of their place and role in systems as a way to create social change