Anupa Deshpande

About Anupa Deshpande

I am a strategic planning, learning, and evidence leader with 20+ years of experience helping mission-driven organizations turn complex data, evaluation, and stakeholder insight into smarter decisions, stronger performance, and greater social impact. My work is based in ensuring systems that generate strong evaluation and metrics for organizational intelligence drive portfolio performance, evidence-based decision making for adaptation, and strategy realization. I design and lead the systems that help senior leaders answer critical questions: Are we investing in the right things? What is working? Where are risks emerging? How do we adapt faster and learn better? Across U.S. Government, nonprofit, and international development settings, I have built and integrated monitoring, evaluation, research, learning, and adaptation systems at national, project, portfolio, and enterprise levels—supporting decision-making for multi-country initiatives, complex donor-funded programs, and global organizations operating in more than 40 countries. I am known for translating evidence functions from compliance exercises into strategic management assets: designing practical performance reviews, learning agendas, portfolio monitoring systems, evaluation frameworks, and decision-support processes that connect implementation realities with executive priorities. My sector experience spans global health, climate adaptation, food security, nutrition, resilience, disability inclusion, and organizational development across Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Core strengths include strategic planning, portfolio learning, impact measurement, organizational performance, adaptive management, evaluation policy, executive facilitation, and cross-functional team leadership.

Experience

1. Senior Program Officer Team Lead Team Lead Strategic Planning, Learning, Evidence & Design

   USAID

   Oct 2018 — Present · Washington, DC, US

   Senior internal consultant to Agency and Bureau leadership designing the strategic planning, performance management, portfolio review, and evidence systems that connected learning to programming and investment decisions across USAID’s global food security and resilience portfolio.Directed Bureau-level MERLA integration across 200+ awards and a $423M+ annual portfolio spanning agriculture, nutrition, climate adaptation, water security, and resilience—helping leadership identify strategic risks, monitor portfolio performance, and adapt investments in real time. Co-architected the Bureau’s first Functional Strategy and built the results framework, MEL plan, and executive decision-support processes aligning four major U.S. Government initiatives into one evidence-driven system.

Education

• Emory University

  Bachelor’s Degree, Sociology

• The Graduate School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  Master of Public Health - MPH, Maternal and Child Health