Amy Jo Dowd

I have a strong and long-standing commitment to generating and using evidence to optimize education and child development efforts worldwide. The basis for founding the internal education research team at Save the Children was a desire to know whether and how interventions were working – and for whom. Country teams and ministry partners often have a wide range of questions about reforms, interventions and innovations. For more than thirty years, I have been supporting them to ask and to answer their questions with rigor and then apply the findings.

Within this work, I saw an opportunity to link growing international education research sophistication in universities with applied research needs in field sites. I invented the Save-University Partnership for Education Research (SUPER) and facilitated over 100 hands-on research and policy experiences for students interested in real-world research experiences. Additional partnerships with academics centered around sharing data, investigating cutting edge issues, and advancing dialogue and advocacy across research and practice. I also supported peer NGOs to extend their use of evidence – opening the SUPER system to non-Save the Children sites, collaborating with dozens of partners on the use of our innovative measurement tools (e.g., IDELA), and expanding the use of evidence-based interventions.

I am excited to support CIES to re-imagine itself during this time of limited public budgets. Research is essential to inform effective, impactful and equitable policy investments in education and child development. While sometimes I am teased for still asking my dissertation questions after all of these years, I firmly believe that we continually need to understand what works, how, and for whom. It is also critical to support such inquiry in partnership with governments, academia and civil society. I experience CIES as an exciting array of such stakeholders and hope to have the chance to bring my innovative thinking to its growth and thriving in the years ahead.