Starting with SCF in Somalia in 1981 and then Uganda in 1983 delivering social services in humanitarian situations in refugee camps spawned by the Ethiopia/Somalia war, a civil war zone (Lowero Triangle) and then Karamoja in a post famine recovery situation.  He worked in Sudan with the London School of Hygiene Famine Early warning research unit conducting research on famine onset and evaluating the humanitarian response for UNICEF.  He then worked on the Demographic and Health Survey Project based in Washington DC managing national social sector household surveys in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Trinidad and Uganda as well as putting in place the analytical scheme for nutrition data from the surveys.  From there he joined UNICEF’s Evaluation Office and coordinated UNICEF’s first two global humanitarian programming reviews, conceived and managed a global evaluation of Growth Monitoring and Evaluation and took part in a number of national Immunization programme evaluations. He also became involved in building through UNICEF country programmes Sentinel Community Surveillance capacities and managed training programmes for UNICEF staff in evaluation, programme planning and monitoring.  Then he moved to Kathmandu in 1994 to coordinate UNICEF’s programme and monitoring activities across South Asia a task that involved conceiving and managing region-wide programme evaluations, country programme planning, mid programme reviews and region-wide situation analysis reports in collaboration with the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation.  He then moved to Kenya in 2001 and served as the UNICEF Deputy Representative; highlights of his tenure were a quadrupling of the funding base, reorienting the programme to focus capacity building programmes in areas subject to multiple years of humanitarian programming, the creation from scratch of a Child Protection programme and the development in support of the Kenya Government of the first cash transfer programme in Africa outside of South Africa.  In 2008 he moved to Ethiopia with UNICEF serving as the Chief of Research, Evaluation, Social Policy and Monitoring.  Tasks included systematising the evaluation, research and monitoring systems in one of UNICEF’s largest programmes putting rigour into the design of evaluation and research.  Helping the government produce their first situation analysis of children and women in twenty years in a collaboration with the UN system and building the Ministry of Social Welfare’s cash transfer programme complementing the food and cash for work programmes already extant starting with a pilot programme combined with a rigorous evaluation design in Tigray Region. Roger returned to Kenya in 2014 and was the team leader for the Evaluation of the $80 million Hunger and Safety-net programme.  He also helped develop Tanzania’s Social Protection National Plan of Action and provided Oak Foundation with consultancy services. Moving to UNICEF HQ he joined the Field Results Group working on modifying UNICEF’s systems for measuring programme results, managed the development of UNICEF’s new five year Child protection strategy and similarly coordinated the development of the Generation Unlimited programme strategy, a new private/public partnership focussing on creating more jobs for young people.

Roger holds a master’s degree on Medical Demography from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition from the University of London.