Fiona has had a varied career working in roles across a range of sectors. Following her
B.Sc.(Hon) and working as a high school teacher, Fiona’s career in international
development started as a coastal geomorphologist working in the outer islands of
Kiribati. This experience formed her passion for working with communities in the Pacific and in international development.
Since then, Fiona’s work has taken her all over the Pacific and South-East Asia, working for development partners such as New Zealand’s MFAT and Australia’s DFAT, and their predecessors AusAID and NZAID, the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, and for several non-government organisations including the Canadian Red Cross.
Fiona is now a highly regarded practitioner in programme design, monitoring and
evaluation; she has led teams in design, and in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of
education and training, health, law and justice, fisheries and agriculture, infrastructure,
economic governance, community development, gender, disability and natural disaster
recovery programmes. Fiona has been a preferred Supplier for both DFAT and MFAT,
including MFAT’s Activity Design and Support Services; and Monitoring, Evaluation,
Research and Learning (MERL) panel; and each of DFAT’s Panels for Design, M&E,
Gender, and Research.
With a passion for both evaluation and capacity development, Fiona regularly presents
papers on both at international conferences and publishes articles in peer reviewed
journals,. She combined these topics for a Doctorate in Education, identifying ways to
effectively evaluate capacity development programmes. Along the way, she has also
completed two Master's degrees as well as several post-graduate diplomas and
certificates and won national awards for her research and work in coastal environments.
Examples of Fiona’s work can be found here
In 2021, Fiona and Kirsty teamed up together to work for GHD Ltd – see the case study
profiling their work in Kiribati on the design of MFAT’s 3rd phase of support on Solid
Waste Management.
Fiona and her husband also run a farm in New South Wales, Australia and several small
businesses. She is committed to contributing to the community – reflected through
voluntary roles including over 15 years in the Rural Fire Service, 10 years as a Lifeline
Counsellor and nine years as a Director with Oxfam.