NAPS History

NAPS was founded in 2016 in Australia by Katie Acheson and Gemma Wood. NAPS is based on the founders’ mutual aim to see better collaboration between policy, program work and data. Gemma and Katie place high value on advocating for those without a voice being clearly heard or acknowledged by decision makers and seek to enhance the lived experience of the world’s more vulnerable people. Having worked on multiple projects together, including children and young people’s policy frameworks and the Australian Youth Development Index (YDI), they realised that their collective skills would make for a strong combination in helping policy makers to build their capacity to develop cohesive, practical and impactful policy. NAPS utilises the strengths of empathetic domain experts to ensure culturally appropriate best practice and enjoys fostering strong stakeholder relationships. With a deep understanding of financial and human resource constraints in many development areas, NAPS strives to provide affordable and efficient advice that advocates for human rights and increased opportunity worldwide.

Founding Partners

Gemma Wood is a statistician and community development researcher with over 20 years of experience in research and consulting roles in the private, public and NGO sectors. She has maintained a focus on increased equity and opportunity for all social groups and particularly marginalised and vulnerable people.

One of Gemma’s career highlights was in February 2017, when she was invited to be part of a six-person panel at the UN Headquarters in New York to speak on “Promoting Integrated Policies for Poverty Eradication: Youth Development in the 2030 Agenda”.

Gemma has partnered with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Commonwealth Secretariat to prepare frameworks for National and Regional Youth Development Indexes (YDIs). She has been a keynote speaker at forums focusing on evidence-based policy through the Commonwealth Secretariat and United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA).

She has led stakeholder engagement with disadvantaged groups, youth, youth organisations, government and NGOs. These consultations have been to develop a better understanding of specific local issues and to find out what development measurement data is available now and what might be available in the future. Her report writing style is accessible to lay people but is still useful for technical experts who design and implement policies based on her work.

Gemma has provided technical support to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Regional Hub for Arab States, as part of their work of supporting governments in developing monitoring and evaluation frameworks of national action plans for preventing violent extremism (PVE). Her expertise highlighted through her presentation and facilitation of sub-groups at the 2019 Amman Forum on Measuring, Monitoring and Assessing PVE.

Gemma’s qualifications include a Bachelor of Science, graduating with the Australian Statistical Society Prize for Statistics (University of Canberra); a Graduate Certificate in Community Development (Southern Cross University); a Graduate Diploma in Strategic Leadership (Skills Certified Australia); and a Business III Certificate; Indigenous Mentoring (Canberra Institute of Technology).

Katie Acheson is an expert in Social Development and a youth engagement specialist with over 20 years of experience in the community sector, various levels of government and globally with international development organisations. Much of her work has involved designing and implementing interventions to engage, empower and create collaborative communities.

She has extensive experience in social development and community engagement, including designing and implementing interventions to engage, empower and create collaborative communities. Katie is a leading youth advocate in Australia, named Australian Financial Review’s 100 Women of Influence in 2019 and Pro Bono’s Impact 25, most influential people in the not-for- profit sector in Australia in 2015.

Katie has developed a broad understanding of the issues facing vulnerable communities, and the social benefits that flow from empowering them. Her experiences extend from leading not-for-profit organisations, managing a community health services, advocating on national stage as Chair of the Australian Youth Affairs Council, to the international stage, which include an advisory role on the Youth Development Index 2016 & 2020 Advisory Panel for the Commonwealth Secretariat. Katie also has experience in community engagement across East Africa, Australia and United States.

Katie’s qualifications include a Masters of International Development: Social Policy and Social Development (Manchester University); Graduate Diploma of Community Services Management (Community Education and Development); Associate of Arts (University of the Nations); Graduate of Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD) and a Bachelor of Social Work (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology).

Core Consultancy Team (alphabetically)

Dr. Andrea Abel van Es is a peace, security and democracy expert who consults for a wide range of international organisations including various UN agencies and the OECD, think tanks such as the Kofi Annan Foundation, and Academic Institutions such as Stanford and Harvard Universities. She has extensive experience in field research in Africa including Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Liberia, Mozambique, Uganda and Zambia, working on conflict and peace building, violent extremism, youth development, refugee resettlement and election integrity. Her research expertise includes both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis, and report writing for both academic and policy audiences.

Prior to joining NAPS, apart from international consulting work Andrea was project manager for Mozambique and Burundi for an Australian Aid organisation, project manager for a Harvard University project on “Money in Politics” where she co-edited an Oxford University Press published book on the subject, and was adjunct lecturer in the Ford Dorsey Masters of International Policy Studies at Stanford University.

Andrea holds a PhD in political science from Stanford University, a Master of Engineering Research from the University of Sydney, a Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering and a Bachelor of Commerce Degree also from the University of Sydney.

Chrissy Zimba is a passionate advocate for equal employment opportunities for young people with disabilities who have employability skills. She has participated in the production of the 2018 Status of African youth report during her work as a young researcher at the African Union commission in Ethiopia.  She is also a 2019 Mandela Washington Fellow. She has both professional and research experiences in development, water and sanitation, demographic dividends, disability and youth.

Chrissy works as a Disability Rights Fund/Disability Rights Advocacy Fund Program Officer for Malawi. She also worked as a research associate within the Division of Disability, Vulnerable Group, in the Social Affairs Department at the African Union Commission in Ethiopia. She holds a Bachelor of Information and Communication Technology (Mzuzu University, Malawi), a Master in Public Policy and Governance (Africa University in Zimbabwe) and a certificate in Social Protection and Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities (Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Science, Germany).

Gaia Grant is a highly skilled learning designer, facilitator and consultant who has developed a wide range of strategies and tools that can be used to find solutions to the most difficult challenges. She has a PhD in innovation leadership (University of Sydney) and an MSc in creative leadership (State University of New York), along with a Grad Dip in change leadership, a BD (hons), and BA Dip Ed. Gaia is a lecturer and researcher with the University of Sydney where she has focused on identifying the leadership culture factors that impact socially responsible and sustainable innovation, along with developing innovative problem-solving skills to address wicked problems. Her research papers have been presented at a number of universities internationally including across the US (such as Xavier, SUNY & Miami), Asia Pacific (Bhutan, the Philippines & India) and Europe (eg delivering at major European management theory conferences EGOS, PROS and AOM in multiple countries). Gaia is an Executive Director at Tirian, an organisational learning and development company, with whom NAPS have a ongoing partnership with.

Gaia has researched, designed and delivered long-term innovation and culture development solutions for a wide range of organisations including in the government and not-for-profit sectors – including IMF World Bank. These projects have included: a one-year innovation solutions project for a joint government venture supporting rural farmers in Indonesia; coordinating strategies for refugee organisations to overcome scale-up challenges internationally; and coordinating the production of a health curriculum in collaboration with government education and health departments that has reached 25 million teachers and students in India. Gaia is also the co-author of a number of books – including ‘The Innovation Race: How to change a culture to change the game’ and international bestseller ‘Who Killed Creativity?… And How Can We Get it Back?’ along with over 30 other educational resources. She is recognized as an outstanding educator, having received multiple university awards for her work.

Gilbert Masereka is a statistician with over three years of successful experience in providing policy, institutional and technical support to governments, national and international organizations in areas of research, report writing, data analysis, monitoring and evaluation. He has expertise in the formulation of policy and strategic advice on Youth Development, Trade Data as well as statistical analysis. Gilbert is an African Union Youth Volunteer Corps (AU-YVC) Alumni. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Statistics (Honors) at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.

Prior to joining NAPS, Gilbert has worked with a number of dynamic organisations at both national and international level including for the Kasese District Local Government in Kasese District - Uganda and the African Union Commission (AUC) in Addis Ababa – Ethiopia. His work has included contributions to the report “Implementation of the Second Strategy for the Harmonization of Statistics in Africa” (SHaSA 2), the “2021 Statistics Pocket-Book (Third edition)”. While working with the Youth Division of the AUC as a Young Researcher he contributed to the development of the “Status of the African Youth Report” (SoAYR). He also worked as a Junior Statistician with the Statistics Division of the AUC on the “KeyStats on African Integration Yearbook, 2019” and the “Statistics Pocket-Book, 2019”.

Isabel Kakuk is a senior project manager and consultant currently based in Canada. Isabel holds a Bachelor of Science (Hons) and a Master of Public Health. Prior to joining NAPS, Isabel worked extensively with government departments and public agencies in Canada and Australia leading evidence-based policy and program design for community services. Isabel has been a part of several large-scale reform projects in child protective services and homelessness services and is passionate about driving system-level change with a focus on building equity and anti-oppressive practice. 

Isabel has extensive project management experience and is a PRINCE2 registered practitioner and holds a Project Management Professional (PMP) from the Project Management Institute (PMI). Her strengths include strategic analysis, compliance and reporting alongside research design and evaluation and monitoring.

Kiran Sonia is working as a senior data analyst in Australia. Kiran has extensive experience in software development, database management and data analysis. She has worked and designed several applications and database systems in her work with government in Pakistan and Australia as well as the private sector. In her current role her focus is working on self-service analytics, key performance indicators, dashboard reports and analysing big data sets. She has also contributed towards standardised data for housing, homelessness and disability.

Kiran holds a Bachelor in Computer Science (Hons) (Gold Medallist) and M Phil in Information Technology from NUST School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Pakistan where her thesis was on Transforming Database Relations to Source Ontology in Scalable Data Integration.

She has four international publications on database management and has presented her work in various conferences. Her strengths include database development (conceptual, logical and physical), data modelling (ERWIN and Enterprise Architect), programming skills across range of databases and programming languages. She also has demonstrated experience in designing and developing dashboard reports for Executives and Senior Management in SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), Oracle Reports, Report Builder, Crystal Reports, MS PowerBI and PowerQuery.

Our Senior Communications Advisor Kristin Hagegård is always looking for ways to amplify a good message. Like when she advised the Swedish Embassy of Jordan to relocate a panel discussion on democracy to a TV studio and thereby reaching 700 000 viewers. Or when she initiated a web adaptation of the UNDP/International Alert toolkit on M&E for PVE (Preventing Violent Extremism), making the most extensive M&E for PVE toolkit accessible world-wide.  

Before joining NAPS, Kristin spent 7 years as Communications Officer at United Nations Development Programme in the Nordic countries, the regional office for Africa and the regional office for Arab States. Earlier in her career, Kristin worked as a journalist for a regional news-paper in Sweden. She also spent some time in Tanzania as communications officer for a local CSO.   

Kristin Hagegård holds two Masters degrees, one in International Relations from Stockholm University, and one in Intercultural Relations from Stockholm School of Theology. 

Ramoudane Orou Sannou is a Development Researcher interested in providing research-based evidence to support the design of policies, programs and innovative projects that foster a process of egalitarian development in Africa. He is a certified Data Scientist by IBM on Coursera and by DataCamp and an advanced R programmer. Ramoudane worked as a Researcher/Data Analyst for the African Union Commission and contributed to a better understanding of Africa’s potential to harness the demographic dividends.

Ramoudane works UNFPA Population Data Fellow, where he supports the work of the UNFPA Burkina Faso Country Office in strengthening and modernising the country’s civil registration and vital statistics system.

Ramoudane holds a Master of Rural Economics and Sociology (University of Parakou, Benin), Public Management Certificate (YALI Regional Leadership Center in Dakar, Senegal), and Postgraduate Diploma of Environmental Management (Technical University of Dresden, Germany).

Susanne has 23 years of experience in international development and is a specialist in governance programming. She supports development agencies build learning capacity and develop evidence-based program strategies. Susanne has been providing technical and managerial expertise to social, political, and socio-economic programmes in Arab countries with, and in close partnership with, donor agencies, government bodies, civil society organisations, and the business sector.

With extensive training in political management, in its broader sense, Susanne has developed a solid understanding of development management and policy-making processes and was accordingly assigned for the programme advise to prominent organisations of the UN, the EU Commission to Jordan, the Council of Europe, the West Asia and North Africa Institute, ActionAid Denmark Arab Region Office, Save the Children, and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Jordan Regional Office. She has led hundreds of research projects and evaluation assignments in the Arab region.

Susanne is a Jordanian citizen. She holds an MSc in Global Public Policy and is well-practiced in research design and analysis. She is fluent in English and Arabic and has working-level proficiency in German, French, Italian, and Russian. 

Dr Tani Shaw’s expertise is in the transition towards the use of multidisciplinary measurement frameworks, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals, in policy development. Tani’s professional experience is in national and international management information systems as well as community development, consultation and policy development. Tani graduated PhD in Sustainable Futures from the University of Technology Sydney with a focus of research on “Pressing the case for wider economic, social and environmental measures of progress: a case study of the OECD Global Project.” An author on measurement frameworks, Tani has followed the growing interest in measurement frameworks as a tool for policy makers to build a robust picture of the state of society for use in planning as well as measuring and monitoring outcomes.

Tani was facilitator of the OECD Global Progress Research Network for four years and was awarded the Sustainable Economy Scholarship with the Centre for Policy Development. She holds a Master of Environmental Management from the University of New South Wales. Prior to working with NAPS Tani worked as advisor and senior consultant in risk and compliance management systems for government and private sector in Asia Pacific and lived and worked in Palo Alto, California, for SAP America working with clients globally on large scale management information systems and reporting.