Finding meaning in complexity to improve development aid effectiveness

Years ago, Raphaëlle chanced upon an advertisement that changed her career path. It was a job opportunity for an evaluation and research consultancy role to evaluate the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) projects — and the young professional was intrigued.

At the time, she had just begun her PhD in Development Studies, thinking she would stay in academia after graduation. And in preparation for this career track, she took assignments that tried to answer “blue-skies, high level” research questions.

“But then I found a space where I could apply all those academic research tools to projects that made a difference in people’s lives on the ground,” says Raphaëlle, recalling her first MEL project. “It was a defining moment.”

That experience changed the way she viewed what her expertise could achieve. Since then, she has dedicated her career to making sense of complex and unique realities, then using that understanding to help inform initiatives and policies that influence lives and the systems surrounding them. This drive is what led her to NIRAS.

Raphaëlle delivers a presentation on equitable evaluation at the European Evaluation Society Conference in Rimini in 2024.

From 2018 to 2022, Raphaëlle led a major assignment evaluating the Ford Foundation’s Building Institutions and Networks Initiative (BUILD). The initiative was designed to strengthen the capacity of over 350 civil society groups globally. It was one of the first developmental evaluations, designed to learn as the initiative evolved. Since 2022, NIRAS has continued the project as a longitudinal evaluation assignment, made to understand BUILD’s long-term impact on civil society.

Sense-making to spark positive change

For over eight years, Raphaëlle has worked on MEL assignments at NIRAS, first in the Stockholm office, followed by Brussels and her current location in Paris. She leads and supports reviews and evaluations, as well as provides clients and internal teams with technical support and expertise.

Because NIRAS operates across diverse sectors and geographies, Raphaëlle’s portfolio encompasses a multitude of fields — such as human rights, social justice, civil society, and gender equality — serving clients such as Swedish Sida, UK’s FCDO, French AFD, the United Nations, the World Bank, Finland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and also private clients like the Gates Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

In particular, she remembers an assignment that she conducted two years ago, one that examined a development aid agency's gender equality portfolio in Türkiye.

Raphaëlle shares this assignment brought to light some difficult realities. Civil society groups supporting women and the LGBTQ community faced social and legal headwinds, including warped rhetoric claiming they were a threat to family values.

“It’s hard for these civil society organisations to stay resilient in an environment that is deeply adversarial,” says Raphaëlle. “Yet they found ways to adapt and adjust their ways of working.”

One important outcome of this assignment was bringing those findings back to donors and policy makers, ensuring that people’s stories and lived realities were heard, and influenced future programming.

Raphaëlle (rightmost) with partners for a gender equality mainstreaming workshop in Cape Town

With the insights MEL professionals like Raphaëlle gather, donors can design programmes and strategies that respond more effectively to challenges on the ground, while recognising the diversity of cultural contexts.

“The more attention we can bring to people’s lived experiences and the realities they face, the better,” she notes. “It’s deeply rewarding to see evidence helping to shape better ways of working on the ground.”

In MEL, one hardly works alone. And in order to accomplish great work, being part of a collaborative and critical group that goes above and beyond is key.

“At NIRAS, I’m surrounded by colleagues who genuinely care about their work, and that makes a huge difference,” she says. “We’ve built a real NIRAS community of practice around MEL — people who share ideas, support one another, and keep finding innovative solutions to complex methodological issues.”

Raphaëlle leads a workshop in Senegal with civil society organisations working in social justice.

When not at work, Raphaëlle exercises her creative side through pottery and illustration. She also recovers from the “constant critical thinking” involved in her job with mindfulness through yoga. “[It] started as a way to calm my mind and give myself some mental space,” she shares. You can see her creative work on Instagram at @raphaelle_art

That community of practice takes many forms. For example, Raphaëlle and the team strengthen collaboration through regular meetings, learning initiatives, and joint strategy setting.

Such activities help them stay connected, align around common priorities, and continuously improve MEL practice across diverse contexts, whether that involves developing tools for fragile settings or fostering mentorship and professional growth for early-career MEL colleagues.

“Working with Raphaelle is always a pleasure. She’s incredibly structured and well-prepared, which brings a real sense of calm and clarity to even the most complex MEL projects,” shares Cecilia Ljungman, the Technical Director for Evaluations. “During sense-making workshops, she has a special way of creating space for reflection and drawing out insights that move the conversation forward.”

Besides the passion and creativity her colleagues bring, Raphaëlle enjoys working at NIRAS simply because it is so diverse. With every new project comes context that she might not know about yet, something she could adapt MEL methods to. And always, there is an opportunity to learn anew.

NIRAS' MEL team together in Sweden in 2025, with Raphaëlle in an orange cardigan

A lifelong curiosity

“I’ve always been drawn to understanding how things work,” says Raphaëlle. “But I never wanted to confine my learning to what was readily available to me. What really motivates me in the first place is the desire to understand the world in all its complexities.”

This inclination to contextualise and understand the world has followed the MEL expert for most of her life. Even as a young adult, she remembers being fascinated by people, whether on trips across Togo, India, and Viet Nam or when she moved from the countryside to the city.

But the older she grew, the more she realised how context had material consequences, significantly determining a person’s future. She quickly learned that people’s environment and backgrounds affected their likelihood of thriving, which led her to studying the context-based definitions of poverty in her Master’s and PhD years.

“The feeling of shaping clay into a vase or drawing a landscape can help you appreciate a bit more the beauty that surrounds us,” says Raphaëlle.

A central question for her became how much agency people truly have in their life decisions, and how much is determined by the circumstances of their upbringing and the society around them. What began as an academic inquiry evolved into a career geared towards progress and equity.

While her early work focussed on the structural forces shaping people’s lives, her experiences meeting others around the world highlighted the human stories behind those structures.

“Meeting people gives you different perspectives – it reminds you to step into other people’s shoes and approach each story with empathy,” she says. “It can also help you reflect on your own choices, and how they connect to the bigger picture around you.”