Ale Aponte implements mixed methods evaluations in the infrastructure (energy and roads), health, and education sectors. She has led work at all stages of evaluation including indicator and instrument design, data collection (ranging from field surveys and administrative data), analysis and visualization, and reporting. Aponte’s evaluation work includes serving as a quantitative researcher for the evaluation of the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s Ghana Power Compact. For this study, she combined data collected from utilities, sensors, and surveys to measure changes in electricity quality. Aponte also worked on Mathematica’s evaluation of The Challenge Initiative, a city-based investment in family planning funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Here, Aponte collaborated with a team of health modeling experts to prepare data collected from health information systems for analysis. She also helped adapt modeled estimates of contraceptive use for an impact evaluation using synthetic controls.
Aponte also supports Mathematica’s advisory services practice. She served as deputy director for Mathematica’s learning partnership with the Power of Nutrition, a novel investment mechanism founded by the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation. She oversaw the completion of the partnership’s final evaluation and learning reports (which monitored progress in reaching implementation and outcome targets), generated an expert opinion on the advantages and challenges of using health modeling tools to measure program impact, and led client and dissemination. Aponte currently serves as deputy director for a learning partnership with the Jacobs Foundation. The partnership designed a monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) strategy for the foundation’s Strategy 2030 and is providing data, analyses, and tools designed to support evidence-based decision making.
Before joining Mathematica, Aponte lived and worked in Latin America where she collaborated with academics, governments, civil society, and corporations working on health and education to conduct randomized control trials, generate policy-oriented evaluations, and design MEL systems for corporate social responsibility initiatives. She also worked in the technology sector, delivering custom market research studies and products for Fortune 500 companies. Aponte holds a master’s degree in international development policy from the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University.
