Gabrielle Cole

Serving as a board member of the Cole Foundation, a 40M CAD private philanthropic foundation with an annual grant portfolio of 2 million CAD dedicated to advancing pediatric and young adult leukemia and lymphoma research and patient care in Montreal, primarily through Transition Grants and Fellowships supporting early-career researchers and clinicians. The foundation also funds Intercultural Conversations, a program supporting professional theatre productions that foster dialogue across Montreal’s diverse communities. Over more than a decade of service, my contribution has centered on board-level governance and executive oversight, with my equity, diversity, and inclusion expertise to guide how the foundation assesses grantmaking decisions across both program areas. Key achievements: • Provided board-level governance and executive oversight of a 40M CAD private foundation, bringing an equity, diversity, and inclusion lens to fiduciary management, capital stewardship, and grantmaking decisions across more than a decade of service. • Advised the Foundation President on strategic grantmaking direction, drawing on EDI expertise to help ensure funding decisions remain accessible, equitable, and responsive to the diverse communities the foundation’s research, fellowship, and theatre programs serve

Directed PINGS (Projet Intégré Nutrition et Genre au Sénégal), Global Affairs Canada’s largest bilateral investment in Senegal and Nutrition International’s first contribution agreement: a CAD $35M, multi-sectoral project spanning nutrition, reproductive health, and gender equality across 5 regions. Joined mid-implementation to lead a turnaround: overhauling annual planning processes, building coordination across a consortium of 3 agencies and 13 implementing partners, and refining the intervention design to better reflect on-the-ground realities. Over 2.5 years, I strengthened the systems, the governance, the planning culture, and the quality of implementation, and saw the project through to a responsible, documented close. Key achievements: • Reached 350,000+ direct and 850,000+ indirect beneficiaries, with women’s participation in income-generating activities increasing by 35 percentage points and 70% of supported women reporting income gains. • Institutionalized government ownership of gender equality by embedding it into 14 sectoral ministry nutrition plans, 1 national multisectoral nutrition strategy, and 15 municipal development plans. • Steered a complex four-tier governance structure: a ministerial-level Steering Committee co-chaired by the Government of Senegal and GAC, and a Technical Coordination Committee with representatives from 15+ ministry departments, alongside national and regional implementation committees. • Delivered a 41-percentage-point improvement in annual target achievement across 20 staff and 13 partners, with all workplans and donor reports submitted to GAC without major compliance findings. • Closed the project across 5 regions with final budget within 2% of projections, producing 7 knowledge products and facilitating an 8-session participatory learning series with 130+ staff and partners that generated organizational recommendations across 7 strategic areas.

Led gender equality and inclusion strategy across Plan International’s West and Central Africa region, covering 14 country offices including humanitarian settings. Over four years, I grew the regional gender unit from a single position to a team of 3, expanded its mandate, and built its influence across the region. The role spanned program quality, capacity building, policy advocacy, and internal workplace culture. Scope expanded further when I assumed full day-to-day oversight and line management of the 14-person Program & Influencing unit following the departure of the unit director. Key achievements: • Grew the regional gender unit from a single position to a team of 3 and secured full-time Gender & Inclusion advisors across all 14 country offices through sustained internal advocacy, translating strategic vision into funded, structural change at both country and regional level. • Revived the regional gender network as a vehicle for capacity building, rolling out gender analysis frameworks and quality tools across 14 country offices through a structured action learning program for all staff. • Assumed full oversight and line management of the 14-person Program & Influencing unit following the departure of the unit director, steering annual planning, overseeing Phase 2 of the Youth Challenge Fund and youth engagement strategy across 14 countries, providing strategic guidance to the Centre of Excellence on CEFM/FGM, and supporting the scoping of a 50M CAD multi-country proposal. • Conducted gender risk and management audits across complex country operations, including Burkina Faso, Mali, and CAR, identifying institutional vulnerabilities and strengthening programmatic accountability in fragile contexts. • Championed a regional security initiative for female staff, contributing to a global working group that established an intersectional security management framework and country-level action plans across the federation.

Seconded to global headquarters following an external recruitment competition, leading Plan International’s Gender & Inclusion unit across a 70+ office federation during a period of significant organizational restructure and Global Strategy revision. The mandate spanned technical programming, workplace culture and EDI, and federation-wide policy, all while navigating institutional change in real time. Building strong cross-departmental relationships was central to ensuring gender and inclusion remained embedded across the federation rather than siloed within a single unit.  Key achievements: • Directed the global Gender & Inclusion unit through simultaneous organizational restructure and Global Strategy revision, defining a cohesive team vision and building strong working relationships across programming, safeguarding, partnerships and HR departments to keep gender and inclusion embedded across the federation. • Contributed to the continuation of the federation-wide Gender & Inclusion policy across 70+ offices through the restructure, engaging senior leadership to maintain gender accountability mechanisms during a period of significant institutional change. • Restructured a 300-member federation-wide gender network into focused communities of practice and workstreams, driving increased member engagement and measurable collective action across the federation. • Formulated frameworks defining gender-transformative approaches in humanitarian settings, operationalizing the humanitarian-development-peace nexus across Plan International’s global programming. • Launched the federation-wide rollout of a gender assessment tool, establishing KPIs to track implementation and strengthen in-country gender capacity across the federation.

Led program development and quality across SOS Children’s Villages’ West and Central Africa region: 18 member associations, 53 million euros in programming, spanning child rights, protection, education, and health. Beyond overseeing regional strategy and a team of 8 technical advisors, the role carried a mandate to strengthen program quality and consistency across a diverse federated structure. The most significant and consequential work was in child safeguarding: building dedicated capacity, establishing robust response mechanisms, and ensuring historical cases received the attention and process they deserved. Key achievements: • Led programmatic strategy across 18 member associations and 53 million euros in programming, aligning global frameworks with country-level realities across one of the organization’s most complex regional portfolios. • Managed a team of 8 regional technical advisors, establishing monitoring systems and driving measurable improvements in program quality across child rights, protection, education, and health. • Transformed the region’s child safeguarding capacity: tripling dedicated human resources, establishing functional case response mechanisms, building cross-regional investigative capacity, and ensuring historical cases were properly documented, reviewed, and addressed. • Shaped federation-wide program policy as a global network member, advocating for gender-sensitive approaches in both programming design and human resources practices.

• Co-designed an evaluation framework and established KPIs for a new province-wide integrated social service delivery system, embedding gender, diversity and equity considerations into the foundation of a major public sector reform.

• Developed monitoring protocols and analyzed facility reports for a citizen-led quality assurance body, translating findings into evidence-based policy recommendations to improve care standards in child protection facilities.

• Conducted monitoring visits across seven New York State men’s prisons, collecting and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data, including on sexual offender programs and experiences of violence, to develop evidence-based advocacy recommendations. • Co-facilitated the start-up of an advocacy council of formerly incarcerated men, building a peer-led structure for sustained voice and representation. • Completed a cost-savings analysis of the HALT Solitary Confinement Act as a member of a grassroots legislative coalition, contributing to legislation that was enacted in 2021.

Worked as an independent consultant across a two-year period, delivering specialized assignments for INGOs and academic institutions at the intersection of gender, gender-based violence, and monitoring and evaluation. A strong thread across all engagements: building the evidence base for what works in some of the most underserved and high-stakes programming areas in the sector. Key achievements: • Developed a gender mainstreaming and GBV mitigation strategy for Catholic Relief Services’ livelihoods program serving Malian refugees in Burkina Faso, integrating protection considerations into economic recovery programming for a highly vulnerable displaced population. • Analyzed program monitoring data for a Johns Hopkins School of Public Health randomized controlled trial studying the impact of Village Savings and Loans Associations on reintegration outcomes for survivors of sexual violence, and built a detailed cost-effectiveness framework for the same program. • Delivered quantitative data collection for an IRC randomized impact evaluation of a mental health intervention for sexual violence survivors in DRC, producing a final report with results, recommendations, a spending plan, and a human resource needs assessment.

• Delivered comprehensive case management services to homeless families, conducting intakes, psychological and substance abuse screenings, unit visits, and referrals for outside services, as a mandated child abuse reporter.

• Contributed to three implementation and training manuals for a women’s empowerment program model used to scale the approach globally, leading a comprehensive review and revision and drafting key sections, with contributions recognized in the published manuals, and facilitated a training-of-trainers session for a multidisciplinary team. • Developed comprehensive program monitoring plans to complement ongoing impact evaluations, ensuring measurement systems were in place ahead of scale-up.

• Managed a $400,000 randomized controlled trial assessing socio-economic and mental health interventions for survivors of sexual violence, in partnership with Johns Hopkins University. • Built monitoring systems and contributed to the design of research methodology, ensuring alignment with program strategy and survivor-centered values. • Coordinated qualitative and quantitative data collection, training and supervising 30 enumerators while maintaining rigorous quality control.

• Launched and scaled a Village Savings and Loans program with a $700,000 multi-donor budget and 11 staff, promoting economic empowerment for survivors of sexual violence. • Contributed to program strategy and proposal development, and ensured synergy with the service delivery and community advocacy components of the GBV program.

• Implemented a Village Savings and Loans project in high refugee-return communities, coordinating a randomized impact evaluation measuring reductions in domestic violence. • Established relationships with local authorities and NGO partners, leading the project’s operational start-up in a new province.