Who We Are: SSDS and Its Staff

Bonnie Shepard, B.A., M. Ed., M.P.A.

Ms. Shepard joined SSDS in 2006 as Senior Planning and Evaluation Specialist. As a consultant to UN and bi-lateral agencies, US foundations and non-profits, and developing-country NGOs, she has conducted strategic planning exercises, program evaluations for sexual and reproductive health and adolescent health programs, and evaluations of philanthropic program portfolios.

Ms. Shepard has a comprehensive understanding of current evidence and 25 years of experience in: sexual and reproductive health; adolescent health and development; women's health and development; women's rights and reproductive rights advocacy; and integration of gender and rights-based approaches into international development programs. Her interventions have helped to refocus advocacy, education, and service programs to be evidence-informed and results-based. She worked with Pathfinder International's Latin American programs in the 1980s, and as Program Officer for the Ford Foundation's Andean Region and Southern Cone office in Santiago, Chile from 1992-98. From 2000-2004, she was Senior Program Manager for the International Health and Human Rights Program at the Harvard School of Public Health, and she has been on the Board of Directors of Our Bodies, Ourselves since 2000.

Ms. Shepard is an established writer and researcher on sexual and reproductive health and rights, young people's health, and women's health and rights, with peer-reviewed articles and book chapters in Health and Human Rights, the International Journal on Men's Health, Reproductive Health Matters (co-author), and Responding to Cairo (Poipulation Council book). She co-authored Breaking the Silence: Young People's Sexual and Reproductive Health in the Arab Countries and Iran, and she is the author of Running the Obstacle Course to Sexual and Reproductive Health: Lessons from Latin America. Ms. Shepard has served as a reviewer for Health and Human Rights, Reproductive Health Matters, Comparative Education Journal, and Vanderbilt University Press.

Ms. Shepard earned her B.A. in Psychology from Swarthmore College, her M.Ed. in multicultural and bilingual education from Boston University, and her M.P.A. from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She has a reading knowledge of French and is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.

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