Jindra Čekan/ová

Jindra is a PlanAdapt Fellow, based out of St. Petersburg FL, USA, and Prague, Czech Republic.

She is a political economist with 36 years of experience in international development. She has learned from villagers and ministers in 27 countries in Africa, Latin America & Caribbean, and Central Asia. Clients have included USAID, several climate multilaterals via the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Agha Khan Foundation, the Red Cross Movement, Catholic Relief Services and many other international and local NGOs.

Since 2013, she has focused on ex-post-project evaluation and what it can teach about sustained and emerging impacts. She uses mixed methods evaluations focusing on locally-led development via national evaluators eliciting participant and partner voices and sharing findings locally and internationally via presentations and publications.  For the last 4 years, she has been evaluating ex-post project sustainability and climate resilience for the Adaptation Fund, and more recently Climate Investment Funds. As a Planadapt Fellow, she is interested in deepening her knowledge of climate adaptation, resilience and ecologic systems & sustainability.

Working with many stakeholders, Dr. Cekan/ova aims to raise up national voices for country-led sustainable development and long-term outcomes impacts long after projects close. Lessons from (post-project) sustained and emerging impacts and final evaluations are invaluable to shape funding, design, implementation, M&E, and learning and inform SDGs and Impact investment strategies.  She has consulted to multilateral such as the Adaptation Fund (at IBRD), non-profits such as CRS, CARE, Mercy Corps, the Red Cross/ Red Crescent), Foundations (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Aga Khan Foundation), and for-profits (Price Waterhouse/ Coopers & Lybrand, Salomon Brothers).

Jindra is the Founder and Catalyst of Valuing Voices . Dr. Cekan/ova has also co-founded ImpactGuild.org, fostering (I)NGO collaborations with impact investors.  She has taught at The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy/Tufts, at Harvard and was a research fellow at the University of Cambridge (UK).

She holds a Ph.D. / M.A.L.D from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, (thesis: ‘Listening to One’s Clients’ a Political Analysis of Mali’s Famine Early Warning Systems) and a B.A. from Gettysburg College in Economics and Political Science.

For more info about Jindra, see Valuing Voices.