Maria Fustic

Maria Fustic is a consultant in two of Universalia’s key practice areas (Organizations & Partnership Performance, and Gender Equality & Inclusion), where she contributes to business development and the delivery of evaluation mandates. She has worked on assignments for a variety of clients including the World Bank, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), UN Women, UN World Food Programme, Global Youth Mobilization, Disability Rights Fund, Caribbean Development Bank, UK Caribbean Infrastructure Fund, Global Partnership for Education, and BridgeNorth. She has managed, designed, and used of a wide range of approaches and tools for qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis, and effectively communicates evaluation findings and recommendations through report-writing, presentations, and other deliverables. In particular, she brings experience in participatory and inclusive evaluation approaches, and strong thematic knowledge on youth empowerment, economic inclusion, and social and solidarity economy (SSE).

Ms. Fustic also works within Universalia’s Performance, Quality and Strategy practice, conducting QA reviews of International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF evaluations. As part of this, she also contributes to annual ILO QA reports, and assesses the contributions of ILO evaluations towards the United Nations System-Wide Action Plan on Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women (UN-SWAP-GEEW).

Ms. Fustic is also Universalia’s Engagement Coordinator; as such, she coordinates Universalia’s engagement in global conferences, communities of practice, and other networks. She is also an active member of the Lunch & Learn Committee, organizing opportunities for shared learning across the firm and wider community. She is fluent in English and Serbo-Croatian and has working-proficiency in French.