Matt Sloan

Matt Sloan

Senior Director, International Bilateral and Multilateral Organizations
Pronouns: he/him/his
Expertise
  • Conducting rigorous mixed-methods evaluations
  • Managing complex data collections
  • Leading international program evaluations in Francophone African and other developing country contexts
Focus Areas
  • International Research
  • Food and Agriculture
  • Education and Workforce Development
About Matt

Matt Sloan directs Mathematica's Center for International Policy Research and Evaluation. He has significant experience working in developing countries, conducting rigorous program evaluations, and managing complex data collections.

Sloan currently leads evaluations of education investments in the Republic of Georgia, Kingdom of Morocco, and Cote d’Ivoire that aim to build or rehabilitate school infrastructure and train educators. He has also directed evaluations of programs in Burkina Faso and Niger that aimed to increase girls’ school outcomes. In addition, he oversaw the development of a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Framework for the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program. This program provides holistic support to academically promising but economically disadvantaged students, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. He has experience with education infrastructure assessments, learning assessments including early grade reading (EGRA), and classroom observation.

Sloan also directs evaluations of activities to enhance the agricultural sector. For example, he is currently directing evaluations of a farmer training and irrigation project in Niger, small-scale fisheries projects in Morocco, land productivity programs in Morocco, and environmental and natural resource management activities in Malawi. He recently completed an evaluation of the Morocco Fruit Tree Project, which rehabilitated olive and date tree groves, trained farmers, upgraded irrigation infrastructure, provided support services, and set up a fund to catalyze private sector investment. Sloan also recently developed a MEL plan for sustainable agricultural practices for the Packard Foundation. He oversaw the design of an ex-post evaluation of a farmer training and technical assistance program in Madagascar and the implementation of a performance evaluation of Compact activities there. He has experience using geospatial data to estimate agriculture outcomes, implementing crop cut surveys, and evaluating value chains.

Sloan regularly presents to professional associations, including the Comparative and International Education Society and the American Evaluation Association, and his work has been published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics and World Development. He speaks French and holds a M.S. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a B.A. in International Relations from Pomona College.

Key Projects
  • Niger: Evaluating the Irrigation and Market Access Project

    Mathematica ‘s evaluation of MCC’s irrigation infrastructure and market access intervention in Niger will incorporate remotely sensed data, in addition to information from farmer surveys, to improve yield estimates and assess changes in agricultural productivity.

  • Niger
    Niger: Improving the Education of Girls (IMAGINE)

    Mathematica designed a rigorous evaluation of the girl’s education component in Niger. The component included public awareness campaigns, local action plans, tutoring and training, incentives for school-age girls and female teachers, and construction of classrooms and latrines.

  • Georgia school building
    Georgia: Impact Evaluation of the General Education Project

    The Millennium Challenge Corporation supported Georgia’s Improving General Education Quality Project. This project involved training of STEM teachers and improvements to school facilities. Mathematica’s study required multiple evaluation designs and data collection activities.

  • Madagascar
    Madagascar: Reducing Poverty and Increasing Investment

    This study for the Millennium Challenge Account Madagascar Compact included a careful review of available documents and data to determine what was planned for each intervention, how much was implemented, what barriers existed to implementation, and what possible outcomes could be identified.

Latest News
  • Students in school
    Mathematica @ CIES 2023

    Hear from Mathematica’s experts at one of these CIES sessions or visit us at Table 02 in the Constitution Ballroom during the conference to learn more about our range of monitoring, evaluation, and learning offerings and our deep education expertise to inform decision making and maximize impact.

  • Literacy in the Developing World

    As efforts such as International Literacy Day call attention to worldwide initiatives to enhance education, Mathematica Policy Research contributes to this critical issue by evaluating the impact of literacy and education programs in developing countries.

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