Solomon T. Abebe, Research and Evaluation Associate (Ethiopia) -
MD and MPH, University of Addis Ababa.
Dr. Abebe oversees the research and evaluation component for Ipas’s Ethiopia country program. He joined Ipas in 2004 and has coordinated baseline and follow-up surveys of over 200 health-care facilities to assess the quality and availability of PAC services. Prior to joining Ipas, Dr. Abebe managed health-sector activities for CARE International in Ethiopia, including projects for integrated family planning and HIV/AIDs services, emergency obstetric care and child survival programs. He has participated in operations research projects on integrated reproductive-health services for HIV/AIDs and for female genital cutting. Dr. Abebe has also held several positions with the Ministry of Health of Ethiopia and with Africare in the areas of program planning, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of provider training and service delivery.

Akin Akiode, Research Technical Coordinator (Nigeria) -
MS in Research and Statistics, University of Agriculture, Ogun State, Nigeria.
Mr. Akiode provides technical leadership for the monitoring and evaluation of Ipas's country program in Nigeria, including oversight of evaluation activities, development of relationships with local partners, grant writing, and dissemination of research findings. His current work includes: an in-depth assessment of the quality of PAC services in hospitals in Kano and Sokoto states; on-going monitoring of PAC services; a follow-up survey of PAC-trained providers to assess utilization of training skills in practice; and dissemination of findings from surveys of Nigerian obstetricians-gynecologists on opinions and attitudes toward abortion.

Janie Benson, Vice President, Research and Evaluation (US) -
DrPH, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; MPH, The Johns Hopkins University.
Since 1990, Dr. Benson has provided oversight of Ipas’s Research and Evaluation Unit and leadership in the measurement of organizational strategic objectives and impact. She has written numerous Ipas-published monographs, manuals and other publications. She has also authored/co-authored articles in numerous peer-reviewed journals, and she was first author of the Technical and Managerial Guidelines for Postabortion Family Planning, a World Health Organization (WHO) publication. Dr. Benson was a contributor to the Compendium of Indicators for Evaluating Reproductive Health Programs published by the MEASURE Evaluation Project, developing program and policy indicators for postabortion care (PAC). Her research interests include postabortion family planning, service delivery quality and access, costs of care, and program evaluation. Dr. Benson also serves as an adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Public Health.

Sushanta K. Banerjee, Research and Evaluation Advisor (India) -
Ph.D. and MPS in Population Studies, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, India; MA in Economics, University of Kalyani, Kalyani, India.
Dr. Banerjee oversees the research and evaluation component for Ipas’s country program in India. Before his association with Ipas in 2006, Dr. Banerjee worked as the Technical Director of Population Services International-India for more than three years. He has 10 years of experience in program monitoring and evaluation; study design; and guiding evidence-based behavior change communication strategies in reproductive and child health. Dr. Banerjee has led numerous operations research and large-scale demographic surveys in India, including the latest available Demographic Health Survey (NFHS-2). He also has served a wide variety of international organizations, including Futures Group International, Taylor Nelson Sofres India and the International Institute for Population Sciences. Dr. Banerjee has authored or co-authored research articles on different demographic dimensions in numerous peer-reviewed journals.

Deborah L. Billings, Senior Research Associate (Mexico) -
Ph.D. and MA in Sociology, University of Michigan.
Since joining Ipas in 1995, Dr. Billings has served as Principal Investigator/co-PI for research in Kenya, Ghana, Bolivia and Mexico on PAC and family planning, and an evaluation of elective abortion services in South Africa. Her current work in Mexico focuses on the development of youth-friendly reproductive-health services, attitudes of medical students and practitioners toward abortion, and sexual violence and the provision of elective abortion for legal indications. Dr. Billings has published extensively in both English and Spanish-language publications. She has also served as a thesis advisor for many masters and other post-graduate students from the United States and Mexico, and she is an adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health.

Kathryn Andersen Clark, Research and Evaluation Associate (US) –
MS in Biostatistics, Ph.D. in Maternal and Child Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dr. Clark provides technical support to the Research and Evaluation Unit, including identifying and implementing appropriate research methodologies; supporting data management and statistical analysis; and participating in analysis and dissemination of findings. Her professional interests include violence against women; reproductive health care access and associated costs; and converting research into policy and practice. Her work has been published in Violence against Women, Women and Health, Contraception and the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, among others. Dr. Clark also serves as an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Tamara Fetters, Senior Research and Evaluation Associate (US) -
MPH, University of California at Los Angeles.
Ms. Fetters joined Ipas in 2000. She provides technical support to several Africa field offices in research design and monitoring and evaluation. She is responsible for design and oversight of organizational systems to track the process and impact of programmatic work, and recently developed a web-based data collection system for gathering data and facilitating decentralized reporting of organizational core indicators. Ms. Fetters has also acted as technical advisor for various meetings and study reviews for WHO, UNAIDS and the International Development Research Centre in Canada. Her professional interests include program and policy evaluation, participatory learning and action research, emergency obstetric care, reproductive health for refugees and HIV/AIDs.

Bela Ganatra, Senior Research and Policy Advisor, Asia, (India) -
MBBS and DCh, University of Bombay, Mumbai, India; MS in Health and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard University, School of Public Health, USA; Post-doctoral fellowship, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Dr. Ganatra has provided technical support to WHO, UNICEF and the World Bank, designing projects throughout South Asia. As a MacArthur Fellow, she designed training programs in reproductive health research for groups across the Asia region. She has published numerous research and policy articles on abortion and maternal health in peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Ganatra is a member of several national and international committees including WHO's Strategic Review Committee on Preventing Unsafe Abortion. She currently oversees Ipas's research and evaluation efforts for the India country program, as well as Ipas's research and policy efforts for the Asia region. Dr. Ganatra's research interests include medication abortion, reproductive health of adolescents, quality of abortion care and qualitative research methodologies.

Hailemichael Gebreselassie, Senior Research Advisor, Africa (Ethiopia) -
MD and MPH, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia; PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McGill University, Canada.
Since joining Ipas in 2000, Dr. Gebreselassie has conducted research to assess PAC service quality and access in public-sector health facilities in Ethiopia and Mozambique; estimated the magnitude of abortion complications treated in public hospitals in Kenya; evaluated the scale-up of PAC services in Zimbabwe; and participated in a longitudinal survey of Ethiopian school-based adolescents. He has published articles in the East Africa Medical Journal and Ethiopia Journal of Health Development and serves on the Editorial Board of the Ethiopia Medical Journal. His professional interests include HIV/AIDs and abortion, medication abortion and measurement of service quality and availability.

Maribel Braña Mañibo, Research Technical Coordinator (US) -
BA in International Economics, California State University, Bakersfield.
Ms. Mañibo came to Ipas in 2002 and has extensive experience in web design, database management and software programming. She has overseen development of the technology component of Ipas's evaluation efforts, including the global, web-based system for collection of training event information.

Catherine R. Neill, Senior Research and Evaluation Associate (US) –
Ph.D. in Sociolinguistics, Georgetown University.
Dr. Neill oversees Ipas’s expansion of its global monitoring-and-evaluation system to track and report program indicators across program-results areas.  She provides technical support to improve data quality as well as ease and reliability of reporting within the organization and to stakeholders.  Before joining Ipas in 2007, Dr. Neill managed USAID’s global microenterprise-monitoring system, which collected annual data from more than 70 countries and offices. Budgetary and program results data collected through this system were used to monitor assistance to the microenterprise sector across USAID and served as the basis of USAID’s annual report to the U.S. Congress.  Dr. Neill was a Fulbright scholar in Thailand, where she also researched women’s employment for USAID and UNIFEM.  She has also worked in several African countries, where she evaluated rural agribusiness and microenterprise projects.

Errol Nkonko, Research and Evaluation Coordinator (South Africa) –
BS in Statistics, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda; Honours, Mathematical Statistics, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Errol Nkonko joined Ipas South Africa in 2006, bringing a background in statistical analysis, survey design and implementation, and applied economics. He has worked as a junior analyst in marketing research and in various social science and health fields, including child health and HIV. Mr. Nkonko provides technical assistance in the design and implementation of reproductive health research projects and monitoring and evaluation of country core programs for Ipas South Africa. His professional interests include biostatistics, experimental design, analysis of variance and cartography

Tia Palermo, Research and Evaluation Associate (US) -
M.S. in Economics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Ph.D. candidate in Public Policy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Ms. Palermo joined Ipas in 2008 and provides technical support for research and evaluation for Ipas’s country programs in Latin America and globally. She was a research intern with the Population Council in Mexico City and has conducted quantitative analysis of large household survey data from Nicaragua, Mexico, and for UNICEF using DHS data from 11 eastern and southern African countries. She previously worked for Family Care International in its fundraising department. Her research interests include program evaluation, public opinion and attitudes toward abortion, access to reproductive health care among Latinas in the US, and sexual and reproductive health among orphans in sub-Saharan Africa.