Key Skills & Expertise

Strategy development; executive leadership and team coaching; organizational design and change management; partnership and twinning-arrangement design; participatory stakeholder workshop facilitation; leadership-development training design and delivery; and published research on technical assistance design and aid effectiveness. Ms. Cooper holds an M.A. with honors from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

Operational Advice, Project Design, Management & Implementation

Over more than 40 years, Ms. Cooper has consulted to the World Bank Group, government ministries, public utilities, and the private sector across agriculture, climate, education, environment, infrastructure, health, and social forestry, spanning needs assessment, project preparation and design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. She was executive management consultant and coach to a World Bank Vice President and Corporate Secretary, led a Performance Needs Assessment including interviews of World Bank Executive Directors and senior management, and supported the President's Office Chief of Staff on office and team effectiveness. She also supported the Vice Presidents of IBRD and IFC for Europe and Central Asia and the Regional Coordination Mechanism, analyzing Systematic Country Diagnostics through interviews of 30 regional and operations staff.

Monitoring & Evaluation

Led collaborative and participatory assessments of project and program performance in multiple countries (including Indonesia's irrigation-sector technical assistance and three local government projects), designed performance-monitoring strategies for the Planning Institute of Jamaica, and authored guidance and toolkits including “Managing Multi Donor Operations in the Africa Region: Learning Guide and Worksheet for Task Managers and Task Teams” and a toolkit on “Partnerships for Increasing Aid Effectiveness.”

Fragility, Conflict, and Violence (FCV) Country Experience

Ms. Cooper has worked directly in five current World Bank-designated FCV countries. In Somalia, she led the program preparation team through a strategic planning exercise to launch the design phase of a primary and secondary education project. In Zimbabwe, she intervened in a conflict-ridden Forest Commission situation, achieving conflict amelioration and a consensus implementation strategy for a social forestry program, and separately evaluated a major capacity-building initiative implemented by the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF). In São Tomé and Príncipe, she designed a capacity-building program for the local construction industry and consulting engineers and a community development program for small-scale infrastructure. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, she conducted a World Bank team retreat on post-conflict, multisectoral work, resulting in an action plan for collaboration among key actors. In Ethiopia, she advised the World Bank on inter-organizational coordination and capacity building for a health project.

Trust Funds

Provided multi-year support to the Climate Investment Fund manager and staff, including design, implementation, and follow-up of an organizational analysis and change process and staff strategy and teaming workshops.

Relationships with Donors & International Organizations

Member of a Price Waterhouse team, working with the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) and the World Bank, that prepared the “Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness: Self-Assessment Tool” and “Good Practice Guidelines on Incentives for Aid Effectiveness” for the OECD DAC Joint Venture on Managing for Development Results; coached a multi-donor stakeholder group ahead of the Education for All – Fast Track Initiative (EFA-FTI) for Pacific Island countries.

Sectoral Experience

Agriculture, climate, education, environment, infrastructure, health, social forestry, water, urban development, transport, and finance and private sector development.

Countries Worked In

China, Lesotho, Malawi, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Poland, Somalia, South Africa, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Jamaica, the Philippines, São Tomé and Príncipe, Bulgaria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Georgia, Cyprus, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan, and the wider Middle East and North Africa region.

Academic & Teaching Experience

M.A. with honors, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (1978); B.A., Sociology, and B.S., Education, cum laude, University of Pennsylvania (1974). Designed and delivered numerous World Bank staff-learning courses, including “Operational Leadership,” “Providing Effective Feedback,” “Team Leadership Fundamentals,” and the leadership and team-effectiveness sessions of “Assuring the Quality of Bank-Assisted Operations in Africa” (AQBOA), the same flagship program designed by OMGI Principal Dr. Richard Cambridge. Published author, including “Closing the Loops: Workshop Approaches to Evaluating Development Projects” and “The Twinning of Institutions,” World Bank Technical Paper No. 23.