Joanna Wakia has over twenty years of experience designing and leading monitoring, evaluation, and research focused on child protection, alternative care, and family strengthening. Her work sits at the forefront of child-centred monitoring approaches that surface the experiences of children and caregivers and of system strengthening evaluation, exploring innovative approaches such as Outcome Harvesting and Realist Evaluation. Joanna currently serves as Maestral’s lead on the Global Campaign on Children’s Care Reform, with FCDO.
Joanna’s technical expertise includes monitoring and evaluation of care reform and child protection systems, child outcomes measurement, systems strengthening, and learning for advocacy. She previously served as Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning Director for Changing the Way We Care, supporting M&E and research across multiple regions, and earlier as Monitoring and Research Advisor for Retrak, where she developed M&E frameworks for reintegration and prevention of family separation in Eastern Africa. Her work has contributed to the development of national and international guidance and strategies, understanding of child protection system strengthening, and measurement of child wellbeing and disability prevalence in alternative care. Joanna holds an MSc in Social Policy and Planning in Developing Countries from the London School of Economics and is based between Kenya and the United Kingdom.