Team Bio

 

Aletheia Donald

MAGNET Team Lead
Economist, World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab

Aletheia Donald is an Economist at the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab, where she leads the team’s work on agriculture and on measurement, including the Measures for Advancing Gender Equality (MAGNET) initiative. She is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development. Her research experience spans the study of poverty, social norms, labor, and methodological work on survey data collection. Before joining the World Bank, Aletheia was a Research Fellow at Harvard’s Evidence for Policy Design. She holds a Master’s degree in Economics from Yale University and a PhD in Economics from Sapienza University.

 

Maria Hernandez-de-Benito

MAGNET Research Coordinator
Assistant Professor, University of Alicante

Maria Hernandez-de-Benito is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alicante. She is an applied microeconomist working on topics in development, family, and labor economics. Her research has focused on intra-household dynamics, crime impacts, women's property rights, youth employment, social inclusion, and improving the measurement of gender outcomes. She is a member of the Spanish Policy Lab for Social Inclusion and the Measures for Advancing Gender Equality (MAGNET) initiative. She holds a PhD in Economics from Georgetown University.

 

Marya Hillesland

Research Officer, Oxford Department of International Development

Marya Hillesland currently holds a Research Officer post at the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford.  She is an economist specializing in gender analysis and development with interdisciplinary training, who has a strong background in social inequality research focused on the Global South and extensive experience in policy.  Drawing from both quantitative and qualitative methods, her research focuses on agricultural statistics; intrahousehold dynamics; women’s empowerment and agency; time poverty; water and food insecurity; livelihoods; and asset and wealth inequalities. Marya has worked with FAO, CGIAR, UNWomen, USAID, and the World Bank. She has field experience in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from American University, Washington, D.C., M.A. from the School of International Service at American University, and a B.S., Applied Mathematics from University of Colorado – Boulder.

 

Heather Moylan

Survey Specialist, Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS), World Bank

Heather Moylan is a Survey Specialist for the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS), the World Bank’s flagship household survey program housed at the Development Data Group. As a member of the team, she leads the technical assistance to the Malawi National Statistical Office for the Malawi Integrated Household Survey, the Integrated Household Panel Survey, and the Malawi High Frequency Phone Survey. She also co-leads the Living Standards Measurement Study – Plus (LSMS+) program and the Strengthening Gender Statistics project. Heather is an expert in the design, implementation, data quality control, and analysis of household surveys. Her current research interests are in the areas of gender, poverty, and agriculture, as well as data collection methods and measurement issues.

 

Clare Clingain

Senior Research Coordinator, International Rescue Committee

Clare Clingain is a Senior Research Coordinator at the International Rescue Committee where she leads the organization’s research portfolio on economic well-being. She has supported research studies on cash assistance and livelihoods programs in multiple countries including Nigeria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad, Germany, Greece, Kenya, Uganda, Colombia, Pakistan, and Cameroon. She holds a M.S. in Applied Statistics and B.S. in Applied Psychology from New York University. Clare is based in IRC’s HQ in New York.

 

Cheryl Doss

Professor of Economics, Tufts University

Cheryl Doss is Professor of Economics at Tufts University.  Her research focuses on rural transformation and gender issues in agriculture; household and intrahousehold decision-making, and women’s ownership and control over assets, including land. Her research on methodological innovations in survey design and analysis is designed to allow richer understanding of multiple and competing voices within households. Her publications span the fields of economics, agricultural economics, and development studies.  She has worked with international organizations including the CGIAR, the World Bank, UNDP, FAO, the African Development Bank, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  She has served as the President of the International Association for Feminist Economics and on the IAEA board.

 

Christian Castaño Bonilla

Consultant, World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab

Christian Castaño Bonilla is a Consultant at the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab, where he works on designing household surveys and running psychometric analysis to improve survey methods measuring agency in development settings. Christian’s research agenda includes gender, development, and political economy. He has a master's degree in Institutions and Political Economy from the University of Barcelona.

 

Caren Grown

Senior Fellow, Center for Sustainable Development, Brookings Institution

Caren Grown is a senior fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution, where she leads a program on gender equality and sustainable development. From 2014-2021, she served as global director for gender at the World Bank Group and then as senior technical advisor in the Macroeconomics, Trade, and Investment Global Practice.  Prior to joining the World Bank, she was economist-in-residence and co-director of the Program on Gender Analysis in Economics at American University in Washington, D.C. Over the course of her career, Grown held several senior positions, including as senior gender advisor at the U.S. Agency for International Development; senior scholar and co-director of the Gender Equality and the Economy program at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College; and director of the poverty reduction and economic governance team at the International Center for Research on Women.  Grown has published widely on fiscal policy, trade, development, and gender data.

 

Hema Swaminathan

Senior Economist (Gender), Asian Development Bank

Hema Swaminathan is a Senior Economist (Gender) in the Economic Research and Development Impact Department of the Asian Development Bank. Her recent research focuses on a broad range of issues, including gendered inequality in income and wealth distributions, improving survey methodology to strengthen gender statistics across domains, and women’s labour force participation. She is a Professor at the Centre for Public Policy at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (India).

 

Losira Nasirumbi Sanya

Lecturer in the Department of Extension and Innovation Studies at Makerere University, Uganda

Losira Nasirumbi Sanya, Ph.D is a social scientist currently working as a Lecturer in the Department of Extension and Innovation Studies at Makerere University, Uganda. She holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Rural Innovation, a Master of Science Degree in Agricultural Economics, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Sciences, from Makerere University. Further, she has attained professional training in gender and development; Integrated Agricultural Research for Development; Agricultural Value Chains Research; Monitoring, Evaluation and Impact Assessment; and Community Development. Losira has over 15 years of extensive strategic, adaptive and applied research experience. She applies an interdisciplinary and gender as well as social inclusion lens to research that focuses on smallholder farmers, market chain actors, and participatory processes. She previously worked at the National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO), Uganda, as a Senior Research Officer in charge of Monitoring and Evaluation and as a Community Development Volunteer with World Vision Uganda. Losira is a Fellow, Mentor, and Trainer for the Gender-responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transformation (GREAT) project jointly implemented by Makerere and Cornell Universities.