Sonal Zaveri is an independent evaluation expert based in India, who has worked in over twenty countries and incorporated a diverse range of methodologies and approaches throughout her 30-year career. Particularly passionate about young people and gender issues, she is a founder and board member for the Community of Evaluators – South Asia, a founder and regional coordinator for the Gender and Equity Network South Asia (GENSA), and the co-chair of EvalGender+, and a Board Member for the International Development Evaluation Society (IDEAS) and the International Evaluation Academy (IEAc) among several other roles and titles.
Zaveri is also a member of the CGIAR’s Independent Advisory and Evaluation Service (IAES) Evaluation Reference Group, which played a role in the development of the service’s new set of evaluation guidelines for assessing the quality of research for development (QoR4D) – both within CGIAR, and in other like-minded organisations. We spoke to her to learn from her expertise as an implementer of real-time evaluation (RTE) and hear her take on its potential integration into CGIAR research contexts.