Meet the team

Core team

Director and co-founder

Charles Teffo

Charles is a research consultant with nine years of experience of which seven with a specific focus on development and humanitarian projects. He is one of ITAR Consultants co-founder.

Over the last years, Charles has worked successively with UNDP as a coordinator of the social stability sector in Lebanon, and with Altai Consulting as a Deputy Regional Coordinator across Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq.

This allowed him to develop a strong understanding of donors and UN strategies, and an expertise on project management, monitoring and research.

Since working in the humanitarian and development sectors as a researcher, Charles has conducted 58 research projects in fragile and conflict affected contexts including throughout Afghanistan, Horn of Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. Assignments include both research and evaluation projects relying various mixed approaches.

Charles has proven expertise on a wide variety of sectors and cross-cutting themes with a progressive specialisation on livelihoods, education, and protection evaluations through baseline and endline assessments.

Charles holds a Master of Public Affairs from Sciences Po Paris. He speaks French and English fluently and has a basic understanding of Arabic and German.

Associate Director

Victoria Jordan

Victoria Jordan is an associate director at ITAR. She has five years of experience conducting research informing policy-making and strategic evaluations for clients including international organisations, national administrations and NGOs.

With ITAR, she progressively developed an expertise in youth meaningful participation in research and participative approaches.

She recently led a project relying on a feminist and participative approach to conduct research together with young women in Burkina Faso. The study aims to identify opportunities for involving girls and young women in Plan International’s response to the multidimensional crisis affecting Burkina Faso.

Her expertise spans several areas including preventing and countering violent extremism, education, economic development, and MHPSS.

Victoria previously worked as an analyst in RAND Europe’s security and defence team and as a research executive with Kantar Public in Brussels. She holds an Mphil in Modern European History from the University of Cambridge. Victoria is mother-tongue French and fluent in English and German.

Senior Analyst

Joelle Saliba

Joelle is a Senior Analyst who has been working with ITAR Consultants since the company’s founding. She was involved in key ITAR assessments in Lebanon and in other countries.

She has developed experience in managing surveys as well as conducting interviews and focus group discussions with a wide variety of profiles in a challenging context.

She was also in charge of the analysis and writing of most of ITAR’s Mental Health and Psychosocial Support-related reports.

In parallel of her engagement with ITAR Consultants, she is also a part-time clinical psychologist. She displays an experience combining both consulting and clinical work on PSS services in Lebanon. She is particularly used and trained to interaction and interviews with vulnerable profiles.

Joelle holds Bachelor degrees from both the Lebanese American University, and the University of Rouen in France; a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology by the University of Balamand; and a diploma in Cognitive and Behavioural Therapy CBT/REBT certified with distinction by The College of Cognitive Behavioural Therapies. She speaks fluent Arabic, English, and French.

NGO professionals

Livelihoods and Food Security Expert

Robin Laur

Robin is an expert in food security, resilience and economic development with more than ten years of experience in the development and humanitarian sectors.

Robin has worked for several international NGOs, in Asia and the Middle East, through various missions in emergency and long-term contexts (including North Korea, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq).

Robin’s technical expertise spans food security and agriculture, socio-economic nets, economic development, women’s economic empowerment, and entrepreneurship support. In particular, he has participated in several emergency responses in Bangladesh (Rohingya crises), Lebanon (Beirut port explosion) and Turkey/Syria (earthquake in 2023). He has also worked continuously in Lebanon region for the past six years, including as a technical advisor on food security and economic development for several NGOs. This has allowed him to develop an in-depth understanding of the socio-economic context and food security issues in the MENA region.

Robin has led most of ITAR’s livelihoods related research, including large studies for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the French Agency for Development.

He is a graduate of ISTOM and holds a Master’s degree in Agricultural Economics and Rural Development.

NGO Operations Expert

Matthieu Legrand

Matthieu Le Grand is a consultant with ten years of experience as an NGO professional. For the last three years, Matthieu has accompanied various NGOs in both (a) needs assessment and strategy development…

in Ethiopia, Tunisia, and Ukraine; and (b) organisational diagnosis and change management in Armenia and Ukraine.

Specifically with ITAR Consultants, Matthieu was involved in most evaluations on the response in Eastern Europe.

Before working as a consultant, he successively managed the implementation of several projects for Handicap International in South Sudan and Bangladesh; IRC in the Democratic Republic of Congo; and Première Urgence in Central African Republic. His experience focuses on accompanying implementation of complex projects including health, protection, and MHPSS activities. Matthieu was a country director for Première Urgence in Central African Republic and in Libya between 2018 and 2020.

Matthieu holds a Master of Laws (LLM) « Peace Operations, Humanitarian Law and Conflict» from the Irish Centre for Human Rights (National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland) and a Professional Training (Master) of « Humanitarian Project Coordination» from the Bioforce Institute (Lyon, France).

Academics

PhD candidate at Tufts University

Thaenpaavai Kannan

Thaenpaavai has been working in the development and humanitarian sectors for over five years in policy research, humanitarian assessments, monitoring and evaluation and program implementation,

with a focus on topics ranging from general emergency response, to nutrition, food security and livelihoods, and public health.

To date, she has worked in India, Turkey, Jordan, Syria, and Thailand with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, REACH, Solidarités International, and the United Nations International Organisation for Migration.

Prior to her current role in Thailand as a project support officer with the Emergency and Post Crisis unit, Thaen  spent over three years working on large scale assessments, program monitoring and evaluation, third party partner training and management with a focus on Syria. She was based in Raqqah with Solidarités International in 2021-2022. 

Thaen holds a master’s degree in International Relations with a focus on humanitarian assistance. In addition to her work with IOM in Thailand, she is a Next-Generation Scholar with the Lancet Commission on Health, Conflict, and Forced Displacement, and a PhD Candidate at the Fletcher school of Global Affairs at Tufts University.

PhD candidate at the University of Montreal

Anastasiia Mykolenko

Anastasiia is currently a PhD. student at the University of Montreal researching the humanitarian infrastructure at the Polish-Ukrainian border.

She was recently involved in ITAR’s assessments, evaluating programmes in Poland, Moldova, and Romania responding to the needs of individuals affected by the Ukrainian crisis.

These include:

the Endline assessment of Phase 2a of Plan Poland’s DEC programme focusing on the provision of psychosocial and educational support;
the Post-Distribution Monitoring (PDM) and Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) for a child protection assessment of activities funded by the UK DEC (Disasters Emergency Committee) in Romania; and
the GNO programme Endline in Moldova focussing on protection and MHPSS.

Anastasiia is experienced in interacting with vulnerable profiles, interviewing them, and analysing data collection results. She speaks fluent English, French, Russian, and Ukrainian and understands Polish. She holds a LLM in European Law from the College of Europe (Belgium) and studied cultural anthropology at the European University of Saint Petersburg.