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.

Monalisa leads Convive’s evidence and strategy work, partnering with organizations to define learning priorities, generate and synthesize evidence, and translate insights into action. She designs participatory processes that make strategy and learning meaningful and usable, supports leaders to lead with learning at the center, and contributes to field-building efforts to strengthen evidence and learning practices across the philanthropic sector.

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.

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 governance, community development, and humanitarian assistance 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.

Monalisa currently loves learning about: 

• How to lead with learning at the center

• How learning creates meaning at work