Melanie Phillips, Phd Email & Phone Number

Hayward, Ca, Us

• Strategic Leadership: As head of the research department, developed and implemented a strategic improvement plan focused on increasing efficiency, transparency, and quality of research activities, with an emphasis on efficiency and replicability.• Organizational-wide Research Management: Coordinated and managed all research activities across multiple departments.

Providing technical advising on research methodologies:•GESI Evaluation Design: Responsible for designing quantitative and qualitative evaluation tools to ensure gender mainstreaming and measure the impact of USAID projects on digital social inclusion.•Technical Program Management: Manage and coordinate all international agents involved in data collection, ensuring rigorous work while respecting the ethical considerations of working in an active conflict zone, with a focus on reaching marginalized groups.

Political Transformation of African Cities Project funded by the Norwegian Research Council:• Senior Project Leadership for Political Transformation of African Cities Project: Served as the mixed-methods expert for the grant project team, offering specialized expertise and guidance across all activities and deliverables to ensure a meticulous integration of gender analysis and quantitative methods throughout the project lifecycle.• Rigorous Methodological Design: Conducted innovative geo-spatial analysis using Google Maps API and OpenStreetMap in R to devise a strategic sampling approach and perform geo-spatial analyses specifically focused on difficult to reach populations. Leveraged advanced quantitative techniques to derive meaningful insights from spatial data, including the incorporation of political violence data.Developed a research project examining how candidate selection rules and gender norms in Africa affect women's political representation, proposing policies to improve women's rights.• Conducted a year of ethnographic research and elite interviews in Africa, building the theoretical framework.• Secured >$50,000 in grant funding from the National Science Foundation, Institute for International Studies, and UC-Berkeley Center for African Studies.• Designed a Qualtrics survey (N=1,333) to test hypotheses, addressing social desirability bias.• Managed the project, recruiting and supervising 10 research assistants.• Analyzed data using STATA, R, and QGIS, and presented findings via PowerPoint at academic conferences and to political actors in Zambia.• Authored an academic article, currently under review in a top peer-reviewed journal.• Findings show gender biases rooted in ambivalent sexism impact development interventions and donor funding strategies; proposed policy solutions in memos.

At Uc Berkeley, I offer two courses:1. Poli Sci 140M: Women in Politics in Comparative Perspective UC Berkeley (Syllabus Attached)Offered: Fall 2021, Summer 2021, Fall 2020, Summer 2020, Spring 2020, and Summer 20192. PolSci 146A: African Politics UC Berkeley (Syllabus Attached)Offered: Spring 2021

Led technical activities for impact evaluations across the globe.•Monitoring and Evaluation in Education: Led research and evaluation for education projects across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, funded by USAID, FCDO, USDA, etc. •Research Design: Led quantitative research and evaluation initiatives across diverse projects in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, utilizing an array of statistical analytical methods, including differences-in-differences, cross-sectional, longitudinal, multivariate regressions, and psychometric •Gender and Social Inclusion: Performed GESI analyses and gender-sensitivity reviews for curriculum projects in Zambia and Malawi, ensuring inclusive practices within the USAID Morocco project.•Technical Instruction and Capacity Building: Designed and facilitated data workshops for USAID projects in Malawi and Jordan, focusing on strengthening systems and supporting localization using tools like R, Excel, and Tangerine.•Clear Communication: Produced technical reports and presentations for diverse stakeholders, effectively communicating project impact and research outcomes.•Socio-Emotional Learning and Self-Assessment Design: Developed SEL frameworks and self-assessment protocols for learners in Jordan, ensuring reliability and validity through psychometric analyses.•Technical Proposal Writing: Authored successful proposals for large-scale evaluation projects.

• Created project with research team to investigate political networks, politician’s preferences, ideological stances on LGBTQIA policy and reproductive rights in order to understand what moves politicians’ opinions on social issues.• Coordinated and scheduled interviews for the entire project team with local activists, members of parliament, civil servants, and party members organizing daily schedules and driving the team’s research strategies.• Acted as project manager, responsible for recruiting, hiring, and supervising 15 research assistants to sample participants across the country while they were in the field and remotely. Collaborated with the team to create survey instruments and experimental components.• Orchestrated cleaning and analyzing the data with the team in STATA and R, producing replicable code that has been tested and used by other researchers.• Translated complex findings with co-authors to communicate successfully through PowerPoint and Beamer by effectively using well-designed tables, graphs, and figures that were presented at academic conferences and to political actors in Zambia.• Co-authored article published in Party Politics (2021), currently cited in 7 other peer-reviewed articles. Three other working papers are in progress showing the relationship between class and political ideologies and how gender affects the strength of political networks.

• Managed project that investigated how the design of security institutions (e.g., military, police, paramilitary, militia) affect the capacity of countries to combat violent irregular threats.• Led a team of 20 research assistants in data analysis, including training new hires and driving progress on project objectives.• Developed a coding protocol to measure how constitutions moderate security institutions that creates a Large-N observational data set from 1991-2016.• Wrote code in STATA and in R to perform internal reliability checks and data audits that improved the internal validity of the data and strengthened projects findings.• Reported project updates and communicated coding obstacles to principal investigators to brainstorm and implement innovative solutions.

Doctor Of Philosophy - Phd, Political Science

Doctor Of Philosophy - Phd, Political Science And Government

Master'S Degree, Political Science

Bachelor'S Degree, International/Global Studies