Veena Pankaj
Director
vpankaj [at] innonet [dot] org | 202-728-0727 x107

Veena has over a decade of experience leading organizations through the evaluation design and implementation process. She works closely with foundations and nonprofits to answer questions around program design, implementation, and impact. As a skilled facilitator she has navigated dozens of organizations through all phases of the evaluation lifecycle: evaluation planning, data collection, analysis and reporting, and action and improvement.

Over the years Veena has developed applied evaluation expertise in the areas of health promotion and domestic and global hunger prevention. This can be seen in her ongoing evaluations of several multi-site, multi-year, health promotion initiatives for the Kansas Health Foundation, including their Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiative and their Healthy Community Design/Access to Healthy Foods Initiatives.

In addition, Veena has worked on a number of consulting projects evaluating advocacy initiatives and hunger prevention campaigns:

• A longitudinal evaluation of the Congressional Hunger Center’s Emerson National Hunger Fellows Program and the Leland International Hunger Fellows Program
• A multi-site evaluation of Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry Campaign
• An evaluation of CARE’s LIFT UP Initiative (a strategy to influence U.S. policy makers by channeling information from the field to key decision-makers)
• Providing consultation and project management to the Annie E. Casey Foundation around their Results Based Accountability Framework

For more information on Veena’s participatory approaches to evaluation, check-out her recently published white paper on Participatory Evaluation: Expanding Stakeholder Involvement in Evaluation.

Veena is also a skilled trainer, and has conducted workshops on evaluation planning, evaluation implementation, and presentation skills in the U.S. and Canada. She has also been a presenter at several conferences including the American Evaluation Association, Alliance for Nonprofit Management, Council on Foundations, and Performance Institute.

In addition to her consulting work, Veena has a passion for organization development, and has received a Certificate in Organization Development from Georgetown University. She employs many of these skills in her day-to-day consulting work and enjoys applying her knowledge to organizational culture change initiatives.

Prior to joining Innovation Network, Veena worked at the Lewin Group, a health care management consulting firm, where her primary area of focus included long-term care financing and health care for the elderly. She received a B.A. in Sociology from University of Virginia, and an M.A. in Social Sciences from University of Chicago.

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