Learning & Evaluation Strategies

Mary McDonnell has a PhD in history and a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University. She joined the Social Science Research Council in 1986, where she became founding director of the Abe Fellowship and Vietnam Programs. While developing fellowships and Asia-focused work, she also served as the Council’s Executive Director. Most recently she led the development of a new genre of programming that applies social science methods and concepts to understand the conditions under which interventions by foundations, governments and NGOs succeed or fail. She used this learning in partnership with donors and their grantees to improve the work of organizations, programs and those who lead them. She recently left her position as Senior Vice President for Strategic Learning to found MBM Strategies devoted to bringing evidence to organizational and programmatic learning for improvement.

McDonnell serves on the Institute of International Education’s (IIE) advisory panel for the long term tracking and evaluation study of the Ford Foundation’s 10 year social justice intervention, the International Fellowships Program. She has served as the chair of the Board of Trustees of the School for Social Development and Public Policy at Beijing Normal University and is a founding member of the board of Resources for Health Equity.