Melanie Kawano-Chiu

Melanie Kawano-Chiu is the Evaluation & Learning Director for the Disability Rights Fund and the Disability Rights Advocacy Fund. She is responsible for supporting and monitoring a multi-year partnership project.

Melanie’s two-decade career has included creating a global monitoring and evaluation consortium; building multi-stakeholder partnerships; teaching at international and domestic higher education institutions; and designing qualitative and quantitative research and evaluations. Prior to this position, she was the Director of Learning and Evaluation at the Alliance for Peacebuilding, where she led an international consortium to improve evaluation practices and policies. She also cultivated and managed relationships with over 300 private and institutional donors and led communication efforts to gain new audiences. Earlier in her career, she oversaw grants for Fortune 20 companies at the American Red Cross. She has authored publications on evaluation and impact of peacebuilding, as well as on post-conflict reconstruction in Afghanistan. Melanie developed curriculum for the first monitoring and evaluation online certificate course for New York University, and was an adjunct professor at Azusa Pacific University Department of Global Studies.

She has a Master’s in Political Theory and Conflict Resolution and a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Psychology and International and Intercultural Studies.