Amanda Woomer

Senior MEL Consultant, Climate Resilience & Sustainability
Oxford Policy Management (OPM)
United States

Nov 3, 2020

Amanda Woomer is a development practitioner focusing on the ways that monitoring and evaluation (M&E) can support sustainable development, conflict sensitivity, and conflict transformation. She is currently the Global Director for MEAL (Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning) with Habitat for Humanity’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter. She also consults on environmental peacebuilding and conservation work. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs and Modern Language from the Georgia Institute of Technology, a Master’s degree in Anthropology from Georgia State University, and a Ph.D. in International Conflict Management from Kennesaw State University. During the interdisciplinary program at Kennesaw State University, Amanda worked on issues related to elephant conservation in Tanzania and the illegal ivory trade. For her dissertation research, she partnered with Conservation International to design an environmental peacebuilding training manual and pilot the implementation and evaluation of the manual in the Philippines. She has also worked with The Carter Center, The Center for Conservation Peacebuilding (CPeace), The Nature Conservancy, and The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust.

Amanda notes that at the beginning of her Ph.D. work, many conservation organizations were hesitant to talk about conflict. Amanda initially addressed the topic of conflict and cultural context by writing about cultural competency. However, in her work, she has continued to push beyond this paradigm, suggesting that incorporating conflict sensitivity and environmental peacebuilding is crucial for addressing conflicts in a holistic way.

This led Amanda to focus on monitoring and evaluation (M&E) as a tool for organizations to better design, monitor, and understand their work as it relates to conflict, peacebuilding, and sustainable impact. Given that development and peacebuilding are complex fields, and that M&E can seem daunting and at time painful, Amanda has worked with organizations to design accessible M&E frameworks. She elaborates on the importance of this work: “M&E work is so complex because you’re keeping track of people’s actions as well as their beliefs, which are constantly changing and not easily quantifiable. Even though it’s complex, the M&E of transforming environmental conflict is and will continue to be so necessary, especially as we face increased challenges from climate change." Amanda is also helping to lead a new project with the Environmental Law Institute and the Environmental Peacebuilding Association to improve M&E for environmental peacebuilding; this project is launching in October 2020.

In the course of her work, Amanda has noted the importance of taking a holistic approach and creating integrated conservation and development projects. She explains, “I find that M&E cannot be put into a box or relegated to one role. People are starting to think more holistically and be more flexible in the way that they work, but it requires a big shift in the ways that donors fund projects. With a bigger shift toward putting resources in M&E, donors are going to want to know what’s working and to see evidence of positive effect.” She highlights the First International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding, held in October 2019, as a place where M&E was widely addressed and talked about, and expresses hope for the future that M&E will gain more attention as an important part of conflict-sensitive work and environmental peacebuilding work.

Amanda’s deep interest and care for the environment is at the core of her interest in environmental peacebuilding. In the Environmental Peacebuilding Association, she is the Co-Chair of the Monitoring and Evaluation Interest Group where she has worked to create a community for professionals working on similar issues. She is excited about the interest that organizations have been paying to M&E work and the integration of those tools in ongoing and new projects.