As a senior engagement lead at Kinaura Partners, Anna Abelson brings deep expertise in strategy, implementation, and evidence‑informed decision‑making to advance complex, partner‑driven initiatives. Within Kinaura’s Gender Equality team, she applies her strengths in portfolio management, data‑driven learning systems, and partner engagement to support the Gates Foundation’s Women’s Economic Empowerment initiatives. Her areas of specialization include measurement, learning, and evaluation; organizational learning systems and AI‑enabled tools; and cross‑sector collaborations centered on the care economy.
With nearly 15 years of experience, Anna has advanced progress in women’s economic empowerment, gender equality, health equity, and reproductive justice. She excels at guiding organizations from evidence to action and fostering inclusive, adaptive change processes that enable collective progress across diverse stakeholders. Her background spans mixed‑methods and community‑based participatory research, strategy development, learning agenda creation, and multisector partnership‑building.
Previously, Anna served as a consultant at Rabin Martin, advising global health and women’s rights organizations on strategy and evidence‑informed decision-making. She also worked as a program officer at Columbia University’s Averting Maternal Death and Disability Program, collaborated with the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health & Human Rights in Cameroon, and served as a Global Health Corps Fellow with Population Council in Zambia. Her work has appeared in peer‑reviewed journals and TIME.
Anna holds an MSPH from Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health and a BA in women and gender studies from Bates College.
Outside of work, Anna enjoys visiting the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and watching women’s basketball — especially cheering on her beloved New York Liberty.
