CRS’s Experience in Catalyzing Scale Mindset and Organizational Shift

Lan Mercado has over 30 years of development, humanitarian, policy advocacy and campaigns experience. She started as a Philippine NGO worker and activist during the Marcos dictatorship. She worked with Oxfam International as Country Director, Asia Regional Director, Director for International Campaigns and Co-Director for Global Strategy and Feminist Futures. She served as Advisor to the Association of South East Asian Nation (ASEAN) on strategic partnerships and resource mobilization for the ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response. She was also the Asia Pacific Regional Director of the World Wide Fund for Nature. She serves on the board of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism where she once worked as a journalist and administrator of the Environment Desk. She is also an Advisory Board member of the Water Justice Fund that advances localized gender-just climate financing by increasing the flows of resources directly to the local level. She is currently the Director of CASCADE, a project of the Catholic Relief Services to catalyze outcomes at scale.

Dr. Richard Kohl is an independent consultant specializing in scaling up promising and proven innovations and programs in international development. He has worked extensively in Africa, Asia and Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in agri-food systems, early childhood development, global health and women’s and girls’ empowerment. He has written and published extensively on scaling, including several papers for the Scaling COP on Scaling and Systems and Scaling Principles. He is the co-leader of the COP’s Mainstreaming Scaling initiative, and has in that context has written case studies of the CGIAR, GIZ, and African Development Bank (forthcoming). Richard previously worked for Management Systems International, the OECD Development Center and the US Dept of State. Dr. Kohl lives in Portland OR.

Erin Baldridge has 20 years of international development experience working primarily with Catholic Relief Service (CRS). She has worked in assignments focused at the country program, regional and global levels in a variety of positions including Program Manager, Head of Office, Business Development Manager, Deputy Regional Director and Chief of Party. She is currently the Deputy Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, based in El Salvador. Until June 2023 was Director of a Global GHR Foundation-funded initiative for CRS focused on strengthening CRS’ institutional capacity to by a catalyst for impact at scale. Erin has partnership, design and management experience across a broad range of the sectors in which CRS works, both in humanitarian and development contexts. She speaks English, French and Spanish fluently as well as Hausa, Tetun and Italian proficiently. Erin holds a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with a focus on behavior change.

Sanela, a civil engineer by profession, joined CRS Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1996. As a Country Representative, Sanela is responsible for country offices/outreach programs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosova, North Macedonia, Albania, Armenia, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. Before taking on the current position, she was Country Manager and Head of Programs. In her longstanding experience with CRS, Sanela also managed several shelter/infrastructure, social housing and community development projects. Some of Sanela’s key achievements include the creation of a social housing model and social housing legislation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She has also managed to establish close links with local authorities securing governmental co-funding and institutional cooperation resulting recently in amending the by-laws on Integration of Foreigners with International Protection Status and development of state’s strategy for readmission of BiH citizens. One of the latest endeavours is support to the government of Armenia and non-governmental organizations for the establishment of non-profit social housing for rent in Armenia through the legal framework and piloting of the model of SH, as well as support to local communities in BiH and Serbia to increase their resilience through the Project Increasing Resilience to Natural Disasters and Improving the Preparedness Strategy.