Meet the Aid Effectiveness 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, senior coordinator for research and policy, came to Oxfam from the ONE Campaign, where, as resident policy analyst, she was tasked with distilling and disseminating information on aid issues ranging from HIV/AIDS to hunger to governance. McConnell was previously based in Bogotá, Colombia, where she created and managed the Alianza ONG, a network of Latin American NGOs implementing social enterprise activities. She has a Master of Public Policy in international development from the University of Michigan, where she commissioned a Spanish/English case study series for the William Davidson Institute and published an article on NGO sustainability. She facilitated a low-income women’s group and mentored street kids for the Fundación Humanitaria in Costa Rica, and she studied and traveled in the Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, India, and Russia. She has worked as a legislative aide for Massachusetts State Senator Brian A. Joyce, a program analyst for the family philanthropy consultants CAP Charitable Services Inc., and an assistant to the housing director for the Hilltown Community Development Corporation. She 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).
Paul O'Brien is the director of the aid effectiveness team. He came to Oxfam after spending five years in Afghanistan, where he advised the senior economic adviser to the president and two ministers of finance on aid coordination, development planning, and policy reform. He was the senior international adviser to the Afghan government in the development of the Afghanistan National Development Strategy (interim) and the Afghanistan Compact. Prior to that, he worked for CARE International as their Afghanistan advocacy coordinator and Africa policy adviser. Previously, O’Brien was the president of the Echoing Green Foundation, which uses venture philanthropy principles to support social entrepreneurs, and a litigator in New York for Cravath, Swaine & Moore. He is the co-founder of the Legal Resources Foundation in Kenya and the founder of the Human Rights Research and Advocacy Consortium in Afghanistan. O’Brien has a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School and has published on humanitarian policy, human rights, and emerging trends in development.
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. 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 manages research on aid effectiveness. Previously she was the lead researcher for Oxfam America’s Farm Bill campaign. 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 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. She earned her Ph.D. in international development from MIT.
Mary Marchal, legislative assistant, comes to Oxfam from Refugees International, where she supported their legislative advocacy agenda. She has a Master of Public Policy from University of Maryland, where she studied international development and security issues surrounding US policy toward Palestinian refugees, as well as Modern Standard Arabic. Previously, Mary served as Senior Research Associate at the Council on Competitiveness, conducting researching 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 government 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 (APEC) 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 non-governmental 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.