Vijaya Vadivelu

Instructor

Chief of the Section for Corporate and Thematic Evaluations, Senior Evaluation Advisor IEO/UNDP

Vijayalakshmi Vadivelu is the Chief of the Section for Corporate and Thematic Evaluations. She leads a team of evaluation professionals overseeing the conduct of the corporate and global thematic evaluation. As a senior evaluation advisor, she also leads global and country-level evaluations, is involved in national evaluation capacity development, and represents IEO in the Executive Board meetings. Vijaya has over twenty-five years of international development policy, evaluation, and applied research experience. At the Independent Evaluation Office, Vijaya evaluated UNDP programmes at the global, regional, and country levels. Vijaya led evaluations such as Strategic Plan, UNDP’s support to conflict affected countries, poverty reduction in LDCs, and global human development reports. Prior to joining UNDP, she was a researcher working on governance issues and gender equality in development at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore, India. She was a Visiting Professor at the Division of Global Affairs, Rutgers University. She holds a PhD in Sociology.

Courses and workshops

Evaluation in the UN

This workshop will outline the core principles for UN evaluations and how UN values (Leave no One behind, Gender equality and human rights) shape evaluative practice in the UN and UNDP. The workshop will go into detail on the implementation approaches and standards across UNDP and the challenges faced in ensuring this. The workshop will offer practical approaches throughout, including reflections on what UNDP has learnt from undertaking evaluations in fragile settings and during the pandemic.

Instructor(s)Richard Jones, Vijaya Vadivelu

LevelIntroductory