Senior Associate (Iris), Gender Advisor (BE4D)

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Abby Cannon is a Senior Associate at Iris Group. She has spent fifteen years working internationally in culturally-responsive research and evaluation, with expertise in gender equality, gender-based violence, global health, sexual and reproductive health, health information systems, and improving data use. Abby is an experienced thought leader, researcher, trainer, and manager, having developed curriculum and gender integration plans, implementation tools, and managed a clinical trial on adolescent health and social support in Tanzania. She enjoys merging qualitative and quantitative data to share the full picture of a program with stakeholders, funders, and practitioners. She specializes in developing and implementing evaluation plans, using data for decision making, and translating results into actionable steps. At Iris Group, Abby is the full time Gender Advisor on the USAID project Building Evidence for Decision-Making (BE4D). In this role, she provides technical support to integrate gender into all BE4D evaluations and activities, supports USAID’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment MEL team, and lends gender expertise to partners and ad hoc requests. Abby holds an MPH and an MSW from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.