IDinsight announces new Chief Operating Officer

July 15, 2019 — Today, IDinsight announces appointment of its new Chief Operating Officer, Rebecca Gong Sharp, who previously served as its Director of Operations. Esther Wang, Founding Partner and IDinsight’s outgoing COO, will shift to a new role focused on fundraising and coaching senior leadership.

Becca will work with CEO Neil Buddy Shah and IDinsight’s Partner group to execute IDinsight’s overall strategy and ensure that the organization applies its own data-driven tools and principles to internal decision-making. Her areas of oversight will include people operations, systems, safety and security, new country expansion, strategic communications, board governance, and compliance.

Becca joined IDinsight as its first Director of Operations in 2016. In that role, she helped the organization triple in size and installed new systems, with a focus on data-driven approaches. Prior to joining IDinsight, Becca worked as a strategy consultant for the Rockefeller Foundation and published research on seasonal migration for Evidence Action and GiveWell. She has extensive international development experience in Central Asia and East Africa, specializing in monitoring and evaluation, behavioral economics, and organizational management. Becca holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, an MBA from the Yale School of Management, and an MPA in international development from the Princeton Woodrow Wilson School.

“Getting to work with this amazing team towards an inspiring mission has been the highlight of my professional career,” Becca said. “These are enormous shoes to fill, but I am grateful for the significant support that made this possible and look forward to this next chapter together, transforming the way the global development sector uses data and evidence to maximize impact.”

“As IDinsight’s first COO, Esther has built an incredibly strong foundation for the organization,” said Neil Buddy Shah, CEO. “She created from scratch an all-star Ops team and a well-oiled machine to run an impactful organization. Without this foundation, we would not be where we are today. One of Esther’s important accomplishments was recruiting and mentoring Becca. Esther and I both could not think of a better person to craft the direction of this critical function for the next phase of IDinsight’s growth. Becca is everything you would want in a COO – deeply strategic in her thinking, exceptional in execution on items large and small, committed to creating scalable and lean systems, and service-oriented in freeing up all of our time to do what we do best.”

“Becca brings an energy, positivity, and commitment that is second to none, in all facets of her complex and far-reaching role,” Esther said. “She is a clear flag-bearer of our values, showing us what it means to be consistently humble, systems-oriented, impact-focused, and building our community of leaders.”

The transition comes at a time of continued growth for the organization, with eight offices in seven countries, and embedded government learning partnerships in four additional countries. Over the past two years, IDinsight has more than doubled in size, now with a team of more than 150 people.