Varja Lipovsek

Director of Learning, Measurement, and Evaluation – Co-Impact

Sustaining Member

As Director of Learning, Measurement and Evaluation (LME) at Co-Impact, Varja brings more than two decades of experience on evaluation and organizational learning with civil society and public sector initiatives. Varja oversees the development of the overall LME approach at Co-Impact, support to program partners on their own LME capacities and activities, the synthesis of lessons and insights across Co-Impact’s portfolio, and the management of global research grants.

Prior to joining Co-Impact, Varja was a Research Scientist and the first “practitioner-in-residence” at MIT’s Governance Lab. From 2012 to 2018, Varja led the Learning, Monitoring and Evaluation portfolio at Twaweza East Africa, a civil society organization focusing on producing evidence for accountability and action in the domains of basic education and open government in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. Before Twaweza, Varja was a researcher at Population Services International, implementing research portfolios and training research teams in several programs in Central and Eastern Europe and South East Asia. She began her career as a program officer at the World Health Organization (WHO), supporting a range of governments and WHO country offices in the implementation and research of HIV and adolescent health initiatives. Varja holds a PhD and an MPH from Tulane University, and a BA (summa cum laude) from SUNY Binghamton.