I am Shenshen Hu, passionate about data, learning, and change.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
Born in China and raised in Hungary, I have seen the same problem with different manifestations and symptoms: people have been educated to stigmatize mistakes, because the underlying message is: “if you fail, you are a failure.” Therefore, change should start with creating conditions in which people can discover what they can do, and build their self-definition on something else than the lack of mistakes. I believe that we need people with vision and introspection, who think about what they want and what their values are, who are not the victims of and thereby reinforcing the pathology of the society.

Monitoring, evaluation, and learning.
I hope to help ensure effective and responsible programming through Monitoring and Evaluation, while acknowledging the unavoidable subjectivity and ambiguity of assessing performance- and outcome-based interventions and projects.
I believe in the purposeful use of data and adaptive learning for improvement and optimization — to build knowledge about what to do next, how to improve, and how to maximize impact. The COVID crisis has highlighted that the more rigid and linear planning methods that are based on our perceived certainty are neither sufficient nor adequate. Adjustment and improvement in design and implementation need to happen much faster through continuous verification of assumptions, catered by more accessible and up-to-date data and evidence. On the other hand, we still need a structured and rigorous approach that would yield reliable information about not only short-term, proximal outcomes, but also long-term distal outcomes. Sometimes iterative design, testing, and refinement could be informed by descriptive information and trends from monitoring data. But as most interventions are highly complex, it is important to delineate delivery strategies and understand their efficiency and effectiveness in order to optimize for scalability and sustainability.

Resilient and client-oriented mindset.
My experiences have taught me to be agile in the face of shifting client expectations, and to consistently review and revise work products and plans. I have also learnt to distill complex ideas into accessible visuals and language to meet interim and final project goals.