VEN founders and chair

RAHEL KAHLERT (co-founder)

Rahel Kahlert is a Senior Evaluation Officer at an international organization in Vienna. Rahel was a long-term Evaluation Expert Consultant with the OSCE, and an evaluator with the U.N.-affiliated European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research. Rahel has twenty years of experience in leading evaluation projects in intersectional policy areas including public health, education, security, and social services. Rahel has evaluated UN- and EU-funded projects targeting vulnerable groups. She trains on a wide range of evaluation topics including participatory, gender-responsive, evidence-based evaluation.

Before joining the European Centre, Rahel was the Head of Evaluation and Deputy Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Health Promotion Research, leading evaluations in the areas of mental health, health literacy and health promotion. Prior to her tenure in Austria, Rahel was a Research and Evaluation Associate with the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin as well as an Ethics Fellow with the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Rahel Kahlert holds a Ph.D in Public Policy from the University of Texas at Austin, where she focused on evaluating effectiveness and impact. Rahel received the Emmette S. Redford Award for Outstanding Research for her evaluation research from UT Austin.

ANITA LEUTGEB (co-founder and chair)

Anita Leutgeb is an independent senior evaluation, monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL), and strategy consultant with more than 20 years of experience in international development. She leads and contributes to evaluations, strategic and organisational reviews and MEL assignments for multilateral and bilateral organisations, international NGOs and other development actors. Her work combines rigorous analysis with participatory and utilization-focused approaches, with a particular interest in making evaluations useful for improving organisational performance, strategic decision-making and learning.

Anita has worked across Africa, Latin America, Asia-Pacific and Europe on projects, programmes, portfolios and strategies in areas including migration and forced displacement, gender equality and women’s empowerment, intellectual property, rural development and climate adaptation, sustainable fisheries, oceans and blue carbon. She specialises in theory-based evaluation, theories of change and results frameworks, qualitative and mixed-method approaches, and the facilitation and communication of evaluation findings.

Anita holds an MSc in Managing Rural Development from SOAS, University of London, and a Mag. phil. from the University of Innsbruck, with studies also undertaken in Rome and Berlin. She works in six languages. More information: anita leutgeb – evaluation&research FOR DEVELOPMENT)