Laura Andes

Chief Program Officer, Charity Navigator

Laura Andes is an evaluation professional with 20 years of experience in the non-profit and government sectors.

Currently, she is the Chief Program Officer at Charity Navigator, where she oversees the development of the Encompass Rating System. Prior to joining Charity Navigator, she was Senior Vice President of National Resident Services Mercy Housing, responsible for the monitoring and evaluation of Mercy Housing’s resident services program and strategic planning. Her team’s responsibilities included setting the strategic direction for resident services, implementing and analyzing Mercy Housing’s resident health survey, developing, and implementing an evaluation plan, reporting on resident services outcomes and overseeing data quality, and leading the implementation of Mercy Housing’s Resident Engagement Strategy. Earlier in her career, Ms. Andes spent close to fifteen years at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), managing various global health programs worldwide in health systems and infectious diseases. After working to implement the President’s Malaria Initiative in multiple African countries, Ms. Andes served as the Division Chief for Strategy, Analysis, Outreach, and Evaluation within the Bureau for Global Health. Her evaluation-related successes included overseeing a $100 million global health evaluation contract and managing the five-year external evaluation of the President’s Malaria  Initiative. Ms. Andes has a Master’s in Public Health from Yale University and a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of Michigan. She currently lives in Colorado with her husband and children, where they enjoy hiking and kayaking the mountains.