Mita Marra is Associate Professor of Political Economy at the University of Naples in Italy. She also taught at the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at the George Washington University (2016-2021), at Maastricht University (2006) and within the International Program of Development Evaluation (IPDET, 2016-2018). Mita Marra has a PhD in Public Policy from the George Washington University, an MA in International Relations at the School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University and a BA in Economics at the University of Naples Federico II, in Italy. Her current research interests revolve around public sector governance and policy evaluation in the field of regional development, innovation, and gender equality. Dr Marra has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals such as American Journal of Evaluation, Systems Research and Behavioral Science, and European Urban and Regional Studies. Dr Marra is Editor-in-Chief for the international peer-reviewed journal Evaluation and Program Planning (2015-present), past president of the Italian Evaluation Association (AIV, 2013-2017), and a current member of the Board of the European Evaluation Society, and the Council of the International Evaluation Academy. Karol Olejniczak is Associate Professor of Public Policy at SWPS University, Warsaw, Poland, and co-founder of the Polish policy research company, Evaluation for Government Organizations (EGO s.c.). He was an Ostrom Policy Analysis Workshop fellow (2006), Kosciuszko Foundation fellow (2012), and Fulbright fellow (2021). Dr. Olejniczak's work focuses on the intersection of policy design and evaluation, and the use of evidence in decision-making. In his research and teaching, he utilizes games, experiments, and behavioral design. He has published the six-volume series Ministerstwa Uczace Sie (Learning Ministries), and articles in scientific journals such as the American Journal of Evaluation, Policy Design and Practice, and Policy & Politics. Arne Paulson pursued a career in international development, working as an economist in a number of international organizations, including the World Bank, UNCTAD (Geneva), the International Energy Agency (Paris), and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), from which he retired in 2007. At the IDB, he worked in all aspects of evaluation, including ex-ante economic evaluation, ongoing monitoring of projects in execution, and ex-post evaluation of completed projects financed by the IDB. At the corporate level, he reported on the overall development effectiveness of IDB operations to the bank's board of directors and at international conferences.
