The Aid Reform team

Gregory Adams, associate director for policy and advocacy, has over 10 years of experience working for members of the US House of Representatives, covering national security and foreign affairs. He most recently served as legislative director for Representative Diane E. Watson of Los Angeles, who is a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and vice chair of the Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health. In this role Adams helped to craft Representative Watson's positions on the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the F process, and other dimensions of US foreign aid. From 1997 to 2001, he served as legislative assistant for foreign policy and national security to Representative Rod R. Blagojevich of Chicago. He has a B.A. in political science from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Porter McConnell, policy advisor, came to Oxfam from the ONE Campaign, where she distilled and disseminated information on aid issues ranging from HIV/AIDS to hunger to governance. McConnell was previously based in Bogotá, Colombia, where she created a network of Latin American NGOs implementing social enterprise activities. She has facilitated a low-income women's group for a small nonprofit in Costa Rica, and studied and traveled in Latin America, Africa, and South East Asia. She has also worked as a legislative aide for a Massachusetts state senator, a program analyst for a family foundation, and an assistant to the housing director at a rural community development corporation. She has a Master of Public Policy from the University of Michigan, and is a graduate of Williams College.

Helen DaSilva, senior press officer, has over 10 years of communications experience. Helen currently leads Oxfam's media work on aid effectiveness and private sector engagement. During her time at Oxfam, she has worked on the coffee sector as well as the No Dirty Gold campaign, which advocates for the rights of communities impacted by mining. Before joining Oxfam, she worked for the YMCA and Brown University in the areas of public relations, branding, and fund raising. DaSilva earned a B.A. in history from Brown University. She is fluent in Portuguese.

Omar Ortez, senior coordinator for programming and partnership, worked in international and community development for many years as a planner and implementer; as a manager, researcher, and capacity builder; and in monitoring and evaluation. For five years, he served as Intermon Oxfam's country representative in El Salvador, and then he coordinated Intermon Oxfam's Evaluation, Systematization, and Technical Cooperation Unit in Barcelona, Spain. In 2003, Ortez became director of evaluation at Roca, where he contributed to developing the organization's Monitoring and Outcomes Evaluation System to track outcomes for highly disenfranchised young people, staff performance, and, ultimately, Roca's impact. Ortez also did consulting work for several Oxfam International affiliates on various research and evaluation projects in Central America and the US. He holds a B.S. in agricultural engineering with a specialty in rural economy from the University of Central America and a master’s degree in international development from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Archana Palaniappan, program associate, has seen both sides of the aid world—working alongside tsunami-affected communities in India for the Center for Women's Development and Research, and in Washington, DC, for the Institute for Public-Private Partnerships, Inc. She also played a part in bringing the world to her hometown by organizing US State Department and Library of Congress exchange programs at the International Visitors Council and by coordinating community events at the Columbus Council on World Affairs. She earned her B.A. in international studies from the Ohio State University.

Raquel Gomes, research manager, has been helping to guide and substantiate advocacy at Oxfam America since 2005. She joined Oxfam from the Center for Global Development, where she was a postdoctoral fellow collaborating on research on the pro-poor impact of US policies abroad and on girls' education. Her own research has focused on the participation of farmers in agricultural value chains, public sector policies for agriculture, public-private partnerships, collective action, and local economic development, mostly drawing from the experience of the fresh fruit industry in northeast Brazil. Gomes has a B.S. and an M.S. in agricultural economics from the University of Maryland and the University of Arizona, respectively, and a Ph.D. in international development from MIT.

Mary Marchal, policy and advocacy advisor, comes to Oxfam from Refugees International, where she supported their legislative advocacy agenda. She has a Master of Public Policy from the University of Maryland, where she studied international development and security issues surrounding US policy toward Palestinian refugees, as well as Modern Standard Arabic. Previously, Marchal served as senior research associate at the Council on Competitiveness, conducting research and managing a program designed to strengthen public-private partnerships, integrate security into business processes, and improve homeland security policy. She has a B.A. in political science and mathematics from Villanova University.

Jonathan Scanlon, lead organizer, has a range of experience in public policy and advocacy, both within and outside government. He is a recent Presidential Management Fellow, where he served at the US Department of State as a US delegate to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, a West Africa desk officer at the US Agency for International Development, and a legislative fellow for US Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri. Scanlon's previous experience in the nongovernmental sector includes advocacy work with CARE USA focusing on HIV/AIDS, avian influenza, and various international conflicts. At the state level, Scanlon worked for Governor Roy Barnes of Georgia and for the state's international trade office in Atlanta. He also spent one year teaching English in Japan. Scanlon has a B.A. in Italian studies from Emory University and a M.S. in international affairs from the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Tariq Ahmad, research associate, is the latest addition to the aid effectiveness team. He is a recent graduate from the Fletcher School at Tufts University where he focused on International Political Economy and Development Economics and wrote his thesis on the Institutional Economics of Aid. Prior to attending graduate school, Tariq had many roles in development in development implementation including as an assistant to Afghanistan’s Minister of Irrigation, Water Resources and Environment, a project assistant to a labor-based roads project in Afghanistan, and as the Middle East Regional Focal Point for the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) in New York. In addition to his Masters of Arts in Law and Diplomacy, Tariq has a BA in Political Science from UC Berkeley.