Appointments
We are delighted to announce the appointment of Jane Lewis as our London based Director, and Maryanna Abdo as Managing Director in Singapore. Both Directors bring significant clout and an impressive depth and breadth of experience that will enable CEI to continue to expand both its impact and reach.
Maryanna Abdo - Managing Director, Singapore
Mary is the incoming Managing Director of CEI, based in Singapore and has lived in Asia since 2012, supporting organisations to develop strategies and innovations that maximise impact across more than 25 countries, with a particular focus on emerging markets in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Her clients have included governments, foundations, impact investors, multilateral donors, and educational institutions.
Mary joins CEI from L.E.K. Consulting, a global strategy house, where she was a Senior Manager and founding member of the global education practice. She was previously Vice President at EY-Parthenon. In both institutions she led the education team's work with public and social impact clients, while also developing thought leadership initiatives, authoring major reports for USAID, DFID, World Bank Group, Qatar Foundation, and Jacobs Foundation, among others.
Before joining Parthenon in Mumbai in 2012, Mary was a manager at the Young Foundation, a social innovation think-and-do-tank in London. She holds a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, which she attended as a Pforzheimer Fellow, and a Master from the College of Europe, which she attended as a Fulbright Fellow. She has a Bachelor degree summa cum laude from the University of Southern California, which she attended as a Trustee Scholar.
Jane Lewis - Director, UK
Jane Lewis plays a leading role in implementation science and practice in the UK. She has been a key user of and advocate for implementation science in the UK for a number of years through highly practical activity to support improved outcomes for children and families. She joins us from Save The Children UK, where she is currently Head of UK Programme Development & Quality, leading on innovation, programme development, implementation, scale-up strategies and evaluation for SCUK's UK programmes. SCUK's work focuses on narrowing the gap in early years outcomes for children growing up in disadvantaged families, and working through a combination of local partnerships and national advocacy with the aim of building out from programmes to sustained wider systems change.
Before joining SCUK she was Director of Implementation Support at the Colebrooke Centre for Evidence and Implementation, providing active implementation support and strategic consultancy to UK and municipal government and NGOs' policy, programme and service implementation and improvement. Prior to that she was Director of Research in Practice, running a member network of municipal government and NGOs to support research utilisation and evidence-informed practice.
Jane's background is in research and evaluation: she led a research department at NatCen Social Research, (one of the leading independent social policy research and evaluation centres in the UK) for many years, and then led the research centre at the National Children's Bureau (one of the UK's leading NGOs in child and family services).