Jessica Baumgardner-Zuzik, Deputy Executive Director - Research & Finance

Jessica is a field-wide leader with extensive research and peacebuilding experience who has published several ground-breaking reports that bridge the gap between organizational-relevant research and sector-wide learning. She is a design, monitoring, evaluation, and learning (DMEL) specialist and economist with 12+ years’ experience in academia and practical application in international development, humanitarian affairs, and peacebuilding. She has over 7 years of field-based experience living and conducting research abroad in rural, conflict-affected, and transitional communities.

Jessica works on improving capacity and understanding within the peacebuilding field on monitoring, evaluation, and impact tools and analysis in conflict-affected settings. She specializes in creating usable, innovative data capture and M&E systems in fragile areas. She applies multiple techniques and theories from a range of disciplines to find creative solutions to tackle DM&E in complex settings.

Her professional experience includes leading and participating in multinational teams, organizational change management, innovative programming, and program cycle implementation in rapidly evolving contexts. She has acted as lead program manager for DM&E activities, project design and implementation, impact evaluations, and RCT’s on several World Bank, UN, and NGO projects. She has led research endeavors involving violence reduction, preventing/countering violent extremism, inter-religious peacebuilding, learning and adaptive management, research ethics, economic empowerment, SBCC and mass media, MenEngage and SGBV, family planning, gender and entrepreneurship, gender and macroeconomic planning, maternal and infant health, ECD, and cross-sector gender involvement in male-dominated industries.

Jessica is fluent in French and proficient in Spanish. She holds a BA in Peace and Conflict Studies and Foreign Languages from Juniata College and an MS in Economics from the University of San Francisco.

Jessica currently resides in York, PA with her husband and much-beloved cat, Noe, where she enjoys doing family pilates, working in her stained glass studio, and reading extensively from her vast science fiction, fantasy, and history collection.