Lisa Slifer-Mbacke is a technical director with over 20 years of experience on projects in developing countries. She served as the chief of party for the Literacy Enhancement Assistance Program (LEAP) basic education project in Nigeria. As an education specialist in the USAID/West Africa Mission, she led the design of a girls’ education program called the Burkinabe Response to Improve Girls’ Chances to Succeed (BRIGHT), which focused on girls’ enrollment and retention in primary schools. She served as the technical director for the Pakistan early grade reading assessment (EGRA) baseline, which was administered to over 31,000 children in more than 1,100 schools throughout the country. In Senegal, she is leading a national study of out-of-school children and youth and she is planning an impact evaluation of a large-scale reading program. She has expertise in scaling up education projects and facilitates the USAID/Education Office’s training course "Scaling-Up for Sustainability". Lisa has a bachelor's degree in world literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz and a master's degree in international communications from American University. She is fluent in English and French.