Claire Hughes
Claire is an independent social development consultant with 25 years’ experience supporting policy and programming in the areas of empowerment and accountability, gender equality and social inclusion. She has worked extensively in the health sector, to strengthen social accountability between citizens, service providers and government and to address barriers, which prevent men and women, girls and boys from accessing the services they need. She has in-depth experience of promoting behaviour and social norm change. Claire is also skilled in mainstreaming gender and social inclusion issues across a range of sectoral areas.
In 2024, Claire led a review of the Thinking and Working Politically Approach pursued by Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL) in Nigeria to distil lessons to inform HMG’s future engagement in Nigeria. In that assignment, she drew on her long association with FCDO’s governance programming, dating back to 2009 when she worked on its health systems strengthening programme PATHS2, one of four programmes in FCDO’s suite of governance programmes. She has also been involved in other FCDO programming in Nigeria, as Results Director for the innovative Voices for Change, which sought to shift discriminatory gender norms, and as Senior Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Adviser for Stamping Out Trafficking in Nigeria (SoSIN), both managed by Palladium.
In recent years, Claire’s work has often focused on monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) in gender equality programming. Claire enjoys working at the interface between MEL and policy and programming, using MEL systems and approaches to generate insights into what works to inform policy evolution and programme implementation strategy.
Claire originally started her development career working in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe but now primarily works in the African continent. She has a long track record of working with FCDO and also has experience with UN agencies, philanthropics and the European Commission.
Claire Hughes
Claire is an independent social development consultant with 25 years’ experience supporting policy and programming in the areas of empowerment and accountability, gender equality and social inclusion. She has worked extensively in the health sector, to strengthen social accountability between citizens, service providers and government and to address barriers, which prevent men and women, girls and boys from accessing the services they need. She has in-depth experience of promoting behaviour and social norm change. Claire is also skilled in mainstreaming gender and social inclusion issues across a range of sectoral areas.
In 2024, Claire led a review of the Thinking and Working Politically Approach pursued by Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL) in Nigeria to distil lessons to inform HMG’s future engagement in Nigeria. In that assignment, she drew on her long association with FCDO’s governance programming, dating back to 2009 when she worked on its health systems strengthening programme PATHS2, one of four programmes in FCDO’s suite of governance programmes. She has also been involved in other FCDO programming in Nigeria, as Results Director for the innovative Voices for Change, which sought to shift discriminatory gender norms, and as Senior Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Adviser for Stamping Out Trafficking in Nigeria (SoSIN), both managed by Palladium.
In recent years, Claire’s work has often focused on monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) in gender equality programming. Claire enjoys working at the interface between MEL and policy and programming, using MEL systems and approaches to generate insights into what works to inform policy evolution and programme implementation strategy.
Claire originally started her development career working in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe but now primarily works in the African continent. She has a long track record of working with FCDO and also has experience with UN agencies, philanthropics and the European Commission.