Natalie Donahue, Chief of Evaluation at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA)

Natalie reflects on the many steps on her journey to being a Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist and a university lecturer

CV IN BRIEF

EDUCATION: B.A. IN BUSINESS MARKETING FROM THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY - THE MAX M. FISHER COLLEGE OF BUSINESS | MASTER OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AT JOHN GLENN COLLEGE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS AT THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

CAREER SO FAR: USC CLIENT MANAGER AT TWENTY FIRST CENTURY COMMUNICATIONS | ENGLISH LANGUAGE ASSISTANT IN FRANCE | RESEARCH INTERN FUND FOR PEACE | GRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANT USAID | PUBLIC AFFAIRS INTERN U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE | DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DEVTECH SYSTEMS, INC. | ADJUNCT LECTURER AMERICAN UNIVERSITY & JOHN GLENN COLLEGE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS AT THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY | CHIEF OF EVALUATION, BUREAU OF EDUCATIONAL AND CULTURAL AFFAIRS (ECA) U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE |

DATE OF INTERVIEW: MAY 2021

AUTHOR: LARA TWERENBOLD

Note: “My views are my own and don't represent those of the US government.”

Three pieces of advice: 

• Be curious. 

• Don’t be afraid to reach out to people and network. 

• Find yourself good mentors. 

You have been working as a Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist as well as a lecturer of International Studies for almost a decade. What sparked your interest in a career in this field of foreign policy?  

When I started my career, I didn't expect to end up working in Monitoring and Evaluation at all. I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Marketing from The Ohio State University in 2004, thinking this would transfer well to other fields and thus leave options open for me. Two years after graduation, I decided to participate in an exchange program in France where I taught English at a local school for a year. It was an unforgettable experience that made me discover my love for travel. When I came back to the United States, I worked in different jobs for two years, but realized that I needed to combine my career with my love of travel. No matter what job I was going to have, travel had to be a part of it. Learning from other people, about other cultures and languages, became my greatest passion. In 2009, I thus decided to pursue a Master’s in Public Administration with a focus on International Affairs at John Glenn College of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University. 

Early in your foreign policy career, you worked as a Public Affairs Intern in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. What impact did this experience abroad have on you and your career trajectory?

After completing my Master's degree in Public Administration in March 2011, I applied for a job as a public diplomacy intern at the U.S. State Department in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was this particular experience that sparked my interest in a career with the State Department. After my internship, I got a job with a small international development company called DevTech Systems, Inc. The organization operated in four areas, one of which was monitoring and evaluation - a field which honestly never interested me much. But then the opportunity opened up to travel to Central Asia as a junior evaluator so I took it. For three weeks, I traveled through Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, meeting the local population and learning about their culture and their countries and the program they participated in. This trip made me realize that monitoring and evaluation is what I was meant to do. And so I threw myself into monitoring and evaluation full time: joining professional organizations (such as the Washington Evaluators and the American Evaluation Association), reading books about the topic, and finding myself mentors. I just knew this was going to be the profession I wanted to work in, I couldn't imagine doing anything else.

What does your work entail? And what does it take to work in monitoring and evaluation?

The goal of monitoring and evaluation is to provide information on whether policy interventions and projects aimed at specific outcomes have had the intended effects. For a thorough evaluation, it is necessary to gather a wide range of information (usually through surveys (quantitative) and by talking to program participants (qualitative)) about their experiences and learning from them about how they are affected by the policy interventions or participating in programs. Evaluators generally have a stronger skillset in either quantitative or qualitative methods and I am much better at the qualitative side, talking to people and getting information through conversations. That’s why the most important thing to keep in mind if you want to work in this field is to be curious. Since working in monitoring and evaluation is about learning from people and their experiences, it is crucial to be a good facilitator and communicator. And contrary to what you might believe, it's not just the extroverts who can do that. Being an introvert myself has proven to be helpful in many situations, like reading a room and understanding nonverbal communication. 

Since 2018 you have been Chief of Evaluation in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) in the U.S. Department of State. What does your work entail in this position?

The ECA Bureau is part of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs of the U.S. State Department. The Bureau is responsible for conducting public diplomacy, primarily through exchange programs. We have Americans going all over the world as well as foreign citizens coming to the United States. By doing so, we are building and strengthening the relationships between people in the United States and citizens of other countries. At its core, ECA is about cultivating people-to-people ties among current and future global leaders to build enduring networks and personal relationships, and promote U.S. national security and values. To evaluate the impact of an ECA program, we may ask foreign participants, for example, how their perceptions of Americans have changed or what they learned about the U.S. government or American values. And in essence, we create mutual benefits from these exchanges for the American people as well. 

If you think back on your career, what was a key moment that led you to where you are now?

When I won the first evaluation proposal and was sent to Central Asia for three weeks, it completely refocused me. Before that trip, I was interested in working in gender and program design, but after Central Asia, I knew I wanted to work in monitoring and evaluation. When I returned, I worked in business development for another year and then took a massive pay cut to get a full-time monitoring and evaluation job at the State Department. And it was absolutely worth it.

Apart from all your other commitments you are working as a university lecturer. Can you tell us a little bit about this work: What subject area do you teach? And would you say this is a platform for you, and if yes, in what way?

I started teaching after the pandemic hit. I couldn’t go anywhere, so I thought, why not take on something new and teach? I like to learn, I like to read, and I like to participate in discussions. That's also why monitoring and evaluation suits me, because there are all kinds of methods involved and always something new to learn. This love for learning is also what allows me to work as a lecturer. At The Ohio State University, my alma mater, I teach a course on contemporary issues in governance. By teaching, not only am I learning more myself by reading all these books, but I also like to think that I may be having a positive impact on the next generation. I'm usually a "glass is half empty" kind of person, but seeing how smart and intelligent these kids are really motivates me, so it’s mutually beneficial, too.

From your vast experience in different geographic and socio-economic spaces, when it comes to development programs, do these interventions seem to make sustainable impacts? Would you say there are unintended or perverse consequences not given adequate attention in the international development policy and practitioner space?

I have worked on foreign assistance programs sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as the State Department. The USAID typically supports longer-term programs over three, five or more years and really digs into a community to provide development results. But most of the foreign aid programs that I have worked on here at the State Department were small local grants. In terms of the sustainability of these projects, even if the program didn’t formally continue, we found that these programs made an impact on the participants/grantees. Whether that's something like knowing how to manage a grant from the United States to something such as gaining self-confidence, we see a myriad of benefits from these programs. Maybe programs don't always have the intended effects, but there are always positive outcomes. When I think about unintended negative consequences, I think of the limit on programming resources where we have enough funding to manage a program with 50 people but maybe it was the 51st person who really needed the program but wasn’t able to participate.

What have been the most challenging aspects of your career? 

The challenge was to get my foot in the door at an organization. After my internship in Bosnia, I applied to 30 to 40 jobs and only got a response from two of them. It's especially difficult for the younger generation not to be discouraged by the difficulty in finding a job after graduation. That's why you should get mentors, start a network and not be afraid to reach out to people, for example on LinkedIn. People like to talk about their field of work and what they do. Another challenging aspect is that sometimes I catch myself wondering if I should be in the position I'm in right now, thinking about how many smarter people than me could be doing this job. It's also perfectly normal to have self-doubt. If others also experience this, I’d say that you can overcome these thoughts by reminding yourself over and over again of the things you’re good at.