Second 3ie Howard White Lecture
Speaker: Dr Deborah L Rugg, former director, Inspection and Evaluation Division, United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services
Date: 13 April 2015
Venue: Beacon Hotel, 1615 Rhode Island Avenue, NW, Washington, DC
In the second 3ie Howard White lecture, Deborah L Rugg used highlights from her 33 years of national and international professional experience to discuss the barriers she overcame and the tips on doing so in achieving important changes in policy and programmes. She drew from her work on AIDS and sex education for young people. She described how, while at UNAIDS, she led the successful establishment of national M&E systems in over 65 countries affected by HIV and AIDS and launched the comprehensive Global AIDS Reporting System. She reflected on her most recent experiences leading the independent evaluation oversight function in the UN, which included increasing the use of evaluation recommendations and successfully shepherding the first-ever UN Resolution on Evaluation through to a unanimous vote by the General Assembly in December 2014.
About the speaker
Dr Deborah L Rugg has over 33 years of professional international and national evaluation experience, for which she has received numerous awards for strategic leadership. She has led international evaluation standards-setting bodies, such as the United Nations Evaluation Group, which she chaired from 2012 until last month, and the HIV and AIDS Monitoring and Evaluation Reference Group, which she chaired from 2006 to 2011. She recently shepherded the first high-level resolution on evaluation capacity building through a unanimous vote by the UN General Assembly in December 2014.
Since 2011, Dr Rugg has served as the director, Inspection and Evaluation Division, Office of Internal Oversight Services, United Nations Secretariat in New York City. From 2009 to 2013, Dr Rugg served on the prestigious US Institute of Medicine Committee to Evaluate the Impact of the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the US National Research Council Panel on Data and Research Priorities for Arresting AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Dr. Rugg held positions which include Director, UNAIDS Monitoring and Evaluation Division and Associate Director for Monitoring and Evaluation, Global AIDS Program, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She has held academic positions at Emory University School of Public Health, University of California – San Francisco School of Medicine and San Diego State University School of Public Health. She holds a PhD in health and medical psychology from the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine.