Mahua Mandal

Mahua Mandal has more than a decade of experience conducting mixed-methods research, evaluation, and learning in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the United States. She specializes in designing and conducting theory-based evaluations, gender-sensitive evaluations, implementation research, and monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) for complex initiatives. Her content expertise includes adolescent health and youth development, family planning and reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, violence prevention, and cross-sectoral programs.

Mandal currently leads a mixed-methods evaluation in Rwanda examining the long-term effects of youth livelihoods projects, including whether and how health-related decisions, behaviors, and gender dynamics in the family and workplace influence livelihoods and related outcomes. This study is funded by USAID under Youth Power 2 Learning and Evaluation. In addition, Mandal supports a portfolio-level evaluation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s (BMGF’s) family planning investments in Indonesia, and provides technical assistance and thought leadership to develop and refine MEL frameworks to support implementing the BMGF family planning strategy.

Mandal is adept at developing relevant theories of change, combining complexity-aware and participatory qualitative approaches with traditional evaluation study designs, and distilling mixed-methods findings and their implications to inform program and strategy direction.

Before joining Mathematica, Mandal held positions at John Snow, Inc., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, and USAID. Mandal has published in several peer-reviewed journals, including Journal of Adolescent Health, AIDS and Behavior, BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, and Global Public Health. She holds a Ph.D. in reproductive, perinatal and women’s health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and an M.P.H. from Columbia University.