Skip to main content

Hannah LaPalombara

Research Scientist
Hannah specializes in monitoring, evaluation, and learning for international development projects.

Hannah is a monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) and research expert with 10 years of experience supporting international development programs. Her work includes technical assistance on MEL topics such as theories of change, indicators, evaluation design and management, and complexity-aware MEL. She employs mixed-methods design, data collection, and analysis in research and evaluations. Hannah has supported projects and evaluations in areas including democracy and governance, transparency, access to justice, civil society, resilience, youth development, women's participation, and Indigenous Peoples. She has extensive experience in Latin America and the Caribbean and has also worked on projects in Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, East Africa, and the Pacific.

At NORC, Hannah’s work on the USAID/Ukraine Monitoring and Learning Support contract has included indicator data quality assessments and reviews of activity MEL plans. She served as NORC’s project director for a final performance evaluation of seven trade-related environmental projects for the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, Office of Environmental Quality and is currently the qualitative lead for a study on forced recruitment of children into illegal armed groups for the U.S. Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons under the U.S.-Colombia Child Protection Compact. She managed a task under the Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance Learning, Evaluation, and Research (DRG-LER) II Activity to produce tools to track the implementation of a USAID policy on Indigenous Peoples, and she developed monitoring indicators and learning questions to that end. Also under DRG-LER II, Hannah was the team lead for the Guatemala pilot of the Women’s Participation and Political Leadership assessment from 2021-2022. Within the Latin America & Caribbean Learning and Rapid Response activity, she served as task lead and author of a MEL practitioner guide on theory of change design. Hannah was the program manager for a complexity-aware evaluation of the U.S. Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs’ Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Academic Fellowship, and she currently oversees the qualitative component of the final performance evaluation of USAID/Dominican Republic’s At-Risk Youth Initiative.

Prior to joining NORC, Hannah worked at a USAID implementing partner, Checchi and Company Consulting, Inc., where she performed program management and MEL tasks for democracy and governance projects in Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, and Mexico. As a consultant with the World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Practice in the East Asia and Pacific region, she co-authored a report on women’s economic empowerment in the Philippines and conducted quantitative analysis for several projects. Additionally, she has provided graduate-level support for MEL activities in Vietnam—where she supported Social Impact’s USAID/Vietnam Learns program—and Uganda, where she reworked the theory of change and designed a M&E system for local NGO, The Recreation Project.

Education

MA

Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

BA

Yale University

Honors & Awards

NORC Team Recognition Award | 2022

NORC

Global Human Development Class of 2021 Outstanding Scholar | 2021

Georgetown University

Project Contributions

Women’s Political Participation and Leadership

Enhancing USAID’s understanding of women’s political participation and leadership around the globe

Client:

U.S. Agency for International Development

Latin America & Caribbean Learning and Rapid Response

Helping USAID respond quickly to democratic backsliding, citizen security, and governance challenges

Client:

U.S. Agency for International Development