We believe that listening is the first step to creating change – within a team, a partnership, or a community.
Our team of experts has a global footprint.
We collaborate virtually from GIA’s headquarters in California with partners and team members globally, and draw from the expertise of other consultants and specialty firms when needed to deliver the best work possible. Our consultants are experts in their fields and have track records of working on complex organizational issues.
We integrate evaluators, strategists, and technical experts.
Katherine Abraham, MBA
DIRECTOR
Katherine is a director for GIA. Previously Katherine worked at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Gartner, partnering with clients across sectors, industries, and functions to address a variety of strategic and management challenges. She has significant experience with organization design and change management. As an International Change Manager with Save the Children International, she managed the transition of operations from Save the Children Members, e.g. Save the Children US, to Save the Children International (SCI) in Eastern Europe and East Africa. She coached Regional and Country Directors on legal, organization design, staffing and communication decisions. Katherine also led several operational and change management initiatives as a member of Kimberly-Clark Corporation’s Finance team. Katherine holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a Bachelor of Business Administration with Highest Honors from The University of Texas at Austin.
Amy Adelberger, MPH
FOUNDER & CEO
Amy is the founder and CEO of Global Impact Advisors. She is responsible for the strategy and execution of GIA’s work. She works closely with her clients to creatively and efficiently solve complex problems. She is commonly seen as a connector and a facilitator – someone who is able to bring together different viewpoints to develop comprehensive programs aiming to achieve an impact on people’s lives. She focuses the firm’s efforts on strategic execution – combining content rich project management with strategic thinking to help clients achieve their goals. These roles have been shaped and influenced through her background in design and public health. She brings a range of skills in program design and management, monitoring and evaluation, and implementation of multi-stakeholder public-private partnerships. While at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, she launched a partnership with the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology and as the TB Program Manager was responsible for the successful execution of the TB program strategy. Amy holds a BA in History from Brown University and an MPH in Social & Behavioral Sciences from the University of Washington.
Scott Rosenblum, MS
PROGRAM DIRECTOR
Scott serves as the program director for GIA. As program director, Scott manages GIA’s work in family planning, climate, and HIV as well as other related projects in global health and monitoring and evaluation. Scott has worked across a number of projects including two strategic evaluations of key partnership organizations in global health, improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the HIV/AIDS response, increasing access to family planning technology, cataloging and evaluating work that bridges the public/private sector divide, and other initiatives in global health. He is an experienced analyst and program manager with expertise in global health, healthcare (including new models of care, hospital readmission reduction, and workforce development), education, disability services, and the environment. He has worked with a diverse range of organizations from large private foundations tackling global issues to community-based human services organizations. His services include research, analysis, strategic planning, program evaluation, and project management. Previously, he worked at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, WA, the Jewish Healthcare Foundation and the Grable Foundation in Pittsburgh, PA, and at Independent Sector in Washington, DC. Scott graduated with highest distinction with a Masters in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University and magna cum laude with a BA from Duke University in Public Policy and Economics.
Leslie Chang, MPhil
CONSULTANT
Leslie is a consultant at GIA. She has a background in management consulting and social impact. She has five years of consulting experience in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and London across the philanthropic, public, and private sectors. During her time at GIA she has been working with international development foundations on strategic planning and M&E engagements, with a geographic focus on China and a sector focus on climate change. As an economic and social historian, her research interests and subject matter expertise focus on bringing together environmental sustainability, global health, and impact investing through the institutional lens of economic development. Leslie holds degrees from the University of Cambridge (MPhil in Economic and Social History) and University of Southern California (BA in History).
Becky Genauer, MA
OPERATIONS MANAGER
Becky Genauer is the operations manager at Global Impact Advisors. As operations manager, Becky plays an integral role in providing support in all aspects of the business, focused on financial management, contract management, operational support and human resources support. Prior to joining GIA, Becky worked as a Nurse Practitioner in Orthopaedic Surgery in New York City for 8 years. Having moved to the Bay area in 2015 she led Operations at Palo Alto Menlo Park Parent Club, as well as stepped up into the role of Director of Scheduling for Alpine Strikers, FC. Becky’s mixture of medical knowledge and operational experience has been a perfect fit for GIA. Becky has a Masters in Nursing from Columbia University as well as a broad set of Operational Skills from running Operations at local non-profit organizations in her community.
Dena Koren, MBA
FINANCE DIRECTOR
Dena is the Finance Director at GIA. Dena Koren also works as a charter school consultant, primarily in school finance, advising school directors and boards how to build sustainable school models. In her extra time, she provides operations and finance support to organizations and small businesses. Prior to her finance and operations work, she worked at the Boston Consulting Group, with a focus on education and operations improvement projects. Her projects ranged from work with Chicago Public Schools to supporting the quality and operations improvements of a large packaged foods company. She also led teacher recruitment at BELL, a national nonprofit afterschool and summer program for low-income elementary school students. Dena has three daughters and two twin sons and loves spending time with them, as well as hiking and running.
Dirk Calcoen, MD
ADVISOR
Dirk advises global executives in global health and development institutions, as well as healthcare and life sciences companies. He has over 25 years of experience in the healthcare industry, including over 15 years as a management consultant with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) where he led global health projects focused on Malaria, Tuberculosis and other Neglected Diseases. Before BCG, he worked as an international public health physician mainly in drug donation programs. He designed and coordinated a program to eliminate river blindness in Sudan, collaborating with WHO, World Bank and Merck & Co. As the primary consultant to Pfizer’s drug donation initiative for trachoma, a blinding disease, he crafted the strategic plan and the governance process and started programs in Tanzania, Mali and Morocco, working with the ministries of health. He started his public health career working with Doctors without Borders in DR Congo. Dirk trained as a public health physician in Belgium, South Africa and the U.K., and has an MPH (Harvard) and MBA (Stanford).
Lila Cruikshank, MBA
CONSULTANT
Lila contributes to GIA’s work to support increased access to family planning technology, as well as to our work to provide management support to the implants access program, a multi-stakeholder public-private partnership. She is passionate about increasing access to quality healthcare. In conjunction with International Partnership for Innovative Healthcare Delivery and Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke, Lila has led consulting projects working with the impact investing network Toniic, global health nonprofit Riders for Health, health supply chain startup Sproxil, and micro-insurance provider Naya Jeevan. Lila previously worked with global health nonprofit Population Services International, spending four years in Mozambique designing and managing social marketing programs. She also worked as an MBA intern at The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Lila received her MBA from Duke University, where she was a Fuqua Scholar and a CASE i3 Fellow, and earned a certificate in Health Sector Management, and graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with an AB in International Relations.
Sarah Emmert, MBA
CONSULTANT
Sarah has led a wide array of strategy projects while working with GIA for global health and development clients to deepen their investment impact; amongst others this includes strategic planning, R&D investment decisions, portfolio evaluations and non-profit mergers & integrations. Sarah previously worked for The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) as both a Consultant and a Global Sector Manager in BCG’s Consumer Practice Area. Sarah’s consulting experience is supplemented by multiple operational and strategy roles in consumer goods and tech. Sarah holds an MBA with Distinction from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University as well as a Bachelor of Commerce with honours from the University of British Columbia.
Annika Grever, MPA
CONSULTANT
Annika Grever has ten years of experience in monitoring, evaluation, and analysis for philanthropic and government organizations. Annika supports results-oriented strategy development, implementation planning, program monitoring and evaluation, and ongoing data informed decision-making. Annika has led portfolio-level evaluations, provided evaluation and analysis support to consortium and partnership efforts, and developed program monitoring frameworks and systems across a range of global health and development programs. Previously Annika worked for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as a program officer for measurement, learning and evaluation for four years in their global health division. In this position Annika led collaborative team development and consensus on long-term strategy goals that served as the foundation for results-oriented strategies. She collaborated with global grantees on investment design to support alignment with long-term strategy goals and ensure monitoring and outcome data were available across a portfolio of investments to inform strategic decision-making. She also collaborated with external evaluators to develop the scope of work and review work products and deliverables on critical investment evaluation projects. Annika has a BA in Economics/Math from Western Washington University and an MPA in International Development from Harvard Kennedy School.
Katrin Kalischer-Stork, MBA, MA
ADVISOR
Katrin Kalischer-Stork assists global foundations in issues spanning country introduction planning of health care products, country opportunity assessments, and investor coordination planning. Katrin is also working with organizations in the sustainability and food security sectors. Katrin is a seasoned independent Strategic Advisor, based in Los Angeles. She has spent the past two decades consulting her clients on a diverse set of strategic issues spanning competitive strategy, corporate strategy, growth and diversification strategy as well as corporate development and operational optimization. Katrin has extensive international experience, having served clients across the globe, including the US, Western and Southern Europe, Central Europe, the Middle East and South Africa. Prior to becoming an independent consultant, Katrin held a Partner position at HighPoint Associates, a boutique consulting firm. Previously, she had spent six years as a Senior Principal at BCG in the firm’s Health Care practice, largely focused on commercial strategy. Prior to her time at BCG, Katrin was Senior Leader in the Life Sciences sector of the Monitor Group where she spent nine years. Katrin holds a Masters degree in Information Sciences (with distinction) and a Masters degree in Japanese Sciences (with distinction), both from the Freie Universität Berlin in Germany, and has studied at Kyoto University in Japan. Katrin earned her MBA at INSEAD in France.
Michaela Leslie-Rule, MPH, MPA
CONSULTANT
Michaela employs her passion and creative insight to GIA’s work in program management, strategy, and evaluation framework design. Her skills as a communicator and facilitator help to engage clients and stakeholders in participatory discussions and collaborative problem-solving. Additionally, Michaela‘s expertise in digital media lends to her creative outlook for qualitative analysis and the development of innovative storytelling communication methods. Michaela’s previous work has led her to partner with many local and global organizations such as the Global Fund for Women, Youth Together, and Engender Health. Michaela holds an MPH and MPA from the University of Washington and a BFA from the University of New York, Tisch School of the Arts.
Alison Tramba Whitten, MUP
CONSULTANT
Alison’s work has focused on low carbon cities in China, vaccine development, the Chinese regulatory environment, animal health, and family planning, to name a few. Her role represents a coming together of her backgrounds in management consulting with Bain & Co, international development, urban planning and systems design. Her planning experience has focused on the intersection of design with public health, housing, food systems, and risk mitigation in natural disasters. Alison has worked professionally across the public, private, and non-profit sectors in Sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, and the US, with relevant projects in water-quality research, development of health infrastructure policy, energy and natural resources strategy and operations, and agricultural business development. Alison holds a BS in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia and a Master in Urban Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Feven Tsehaye, BA
CONSULTANT
Feven has extensive experience working on social impact investments in agriculture and healthcare in Ethiopia. She has spent the past four years working at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s China then Ethiopia office, focusing on engagement models and mechanisms to increase private sector engagement in Africa. Her responsibilities included strategy development, investment planning, business development, deal sourcing and vetting opportunities, and managing relationships with key stakeholders in several foundation countries in Africa. Prior to joining the foundation, Feven served as a fellow for Vittana in Peru, scaling-up product and service delivery for vocational education micro-loan programs. In previous roles, she worked as a management and operations Consultant for the Student and Exchange Visitors Program under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security leading the I-901 team. Feven graduated with her MPA from Tsinghua University. Her thesis assessed the trends and social impact of micro-finance schemes for rural to urban migrants in Southern Ethiopia. She received her BA in International Development from American University.