Pauline Achola
Program Manager, International Centre for Women's Leadership
Pauline Achola has more than 13 years experience in sustainable economic development and livelihoods planning in low-income communities. Her work in this area has spanned research, community development planning, gender planning in economic development, and monitoring and evaluation.
As a Co-ordinator with the Women's Network Centre in the Coast Province of Kenya, she developed outreach projects for women's groups to support networking, learning and access to resource opportunities.
In her roles as Advisor and Manager of Technical Services for Mennonite Economic Development Associates, Pauline developed gender strategies for sustainable livelihoods projects in places like Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Ukraine, including the development of robust, results-based gender sensitive performance metrics. She also developed an institutional gender strategy, a project-focused gender empowerment framework and workshop made available to MEDA's worldwide offices. Pauline also facilitated a Women's Business Network made up of three national business women's associations representing more than 10,000 low-income and marginalized women entrepreneurs in South Asia.
As a researcher, Pauline has conducted and overseen several research and evaluation projects for the non-profit sector as well as for provincial and federal government clients in Canada.
Pauline holds a Master of Science Degree in International Rural Development Planning from the University of Guelph in Ontario and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. Before joining the Coady Institute, Pauline worked for R.A. Malatest and Associates, Ltd. in Toronto.