Catherine Schenck-Yglesias

Consultant, Photographer, Scientist, World traveler, Writer/Editor

A social demographer and public health informatics expert, Catherine Schenck-Yglesias has contributed her expertise to the global health field for nearly three decades. She has an exceptional foundation in social and health sciences from leading US and Mexican universities and over 20 years of applied science experience. Committed to human capacity-building and the use of strategic information systems to advance global health, Ms. Schenck-Yglesias continues to analyze and interpret demographic, epidemiologic and socio-economic data. She enjoys working with organizations characterized by technical, managerial and fiduciary transparency and accountability, with a focus on measurable results. She has managed annual strategic information and results management system budgets of $300,000 - $13 million for work across up to 50 highly impoverished (HIPC) to middle-income countries (MIC) and advised on the design of public-private partnerships (PPPs). Having traveled to over 40 countries, Ms. Schenck-Yglesias has successfully worked with personnel across cultures and professional disciplines, contributing onsite to health and development initiatives supported by a combination of multilateral and bilateral donor, US foreign assistance, foundation, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and host government funding in: Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Malawi, Mexico, Mozambique, Nepal, Nigeria, Panama, Qatar, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, Uruguay, the US and two post-conflict countries: the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and Timor-Leste. When time permits, her social science research/reading interests include economic sociology, international development and migration, ethics and the use of unique person identifiers in population registers and health information systems. The interest and work of Ms. Schenck-Yglesias in health informatics grew out of her training on international demographic & health surveys and indirect estimation in the absence of even aggregate health data in developing countries jointly with early work on quality of care, clinical performance measures, and ample, detailed, individually-identifiable hospital and cancer epidemiology data within the US health system. She has provided research, monitoring, evaluation, projection and planning technical leadership to health & development projects using quantitative and qualitative data. She applies the appropriate conceptual, logical and mathematical models to the interpretation of population survey, key informant interview, clinical and health information system, and administrative data. She has excellent project management, business intelligence & analytics, data visualization, as well as written communications and presentation skills. Technology skills: SPSS, ArcGIS, SAP, MS Access, Project, Visio. Her achievements include: evaluating funding proposals and country operational plans submitted by implementing partners to USAID; writing the technical sections and results frameworks of successful funding proposals; contributing to PPP design; leading requirements research and competitive bids for the procurement of enterprise-level information systems; and managing health information systems design, implementation, evaluation and related capacity-building for an interagency (CDC, Census Bureau, Department of Defense, Department of State, USAID) global health program. Ms. Schenck-Yglesias has supervised contractors, short and long-term consultants and staff located in the US and internationally and led change management and capacity-building initiatives to incorporate innovative information systems within global federal and NGO operations. While providing technical assistance in Lebanon on behalf of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Ms. Schenck-Yglesias completed the requirements research, analysis, design and procurement that led to the contracting of a local IT company for the deployment of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 information system at centers, shelters and offices operated throughout 5 governorates by the Caritas Lebanon Migrant Center (CLMC). CLMC's beneficiaries are migrants to Lebanon covered by its donor-funded programs (e.g., domestic workers from several developing countries, Syrians and Iraqis displaced by war, and Palestinians). The requirements covered beneficiary, logistics, project and training management modules; entailed data migration from multiple legacy databases housing data in Arabic, French and English; and included extensibility for linkages to both accounting and geographic information systems (GIS) for an enterprise-level view of the NGO's operations. Catherine Schenck-Yglesias currently resides in Lebanon.

the science of uncertainty

economic sociology

Demography, health informatics, International Development, Social Science

TEDGlobal 2011 -- fascinating event! TEDx Beirut Salon in September 2012 -- very cool venue at Zouk Mikael in Jounieh, and interesting and energetic crowd. TEDx Binnenhoff Viewing Party in Beirut in Spring 2014.

writing and data visualization