OUR TEAM
People Powered Impact
Meet Our Global Teams
The Development CAFE team is multicultural, international, and highly experienced across diverse sectors. With members from Asia, Africa, and beyond, the team brings varied perspectives, languages, and cultural insights. This diversity strengthens collaboration, innovation, and our ability to deliver inclusive, locally grounded solutions in complex development and policy environments.
Global Governing Board
Valentine J. Gandhi founded the organisation in 2001 after his career change from IT to International Development to bridge the two worlds of Technology and MEL. He is a Senior Evaluator and Policy Advisor with over 24 years of experience designing and implementing programs, evaluation, research, and implementation projects for donors, UN agencies, research institutions, and governments in Asia and Africa, including crisis zones like Myanmar, Afghanistan and Somalia. He is currently the Chief of Party for a 14-country Regional USAID MEL platform, implemented by MSI. He specialises in ICT 4 Assessment and mixed and creative approaches, planning, executing, managing, and analysing complex and large-scale evaluations and datasets, including significant humanitarian, economic, and agricultural projects in India, Zambia, Somalia, Indonesia, and Kenya. He is an expert trainer, capacity builder, and facilitator. He taught partners and stakeholders blended methodologies, data visualisation, social media, and communication to successfully communicate field findings. He speaks English, Tamil, Hindi and Indonesian. While not actively involved in day to day operations, he chairs the board and sets the vision and direction for the organization.
India Governing Board
Indonesia Governing Board
Ida is the head of MEL and Indonesia Director, at The Development Café with over 10 years of experience delivering Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, Collaboration, Learning and Adaptation (MERCLA) for capacity building and policy influencing in Indonesia. She has worked with USAID for its MEL and health projects, UK FCDO for its land use change, low carbon development and spatial planning, GIZ with its youth, vocational, tourism and agriculture, Australian DFAT for its governance and basic services project, and others. She has led several baseline, feasibility and evaluation projects. Sectorally, she specialises in creating MEL systems and frameworks, in sustainability issues, especially in green and blue economy sectors, including carbon credits, forestry and land use, marine and coastal ecosystems and livelihoods. She brings expertise in science-based policy influencing and multi-stakeholder partnership approach to learning and capacity building. She has led learning and knowledge dissemination for multiple FCDO-funded programmes in Indonesia and is adept at synthesising lessons to inform policies for GoI stakeholders at both national and provincial levels.
Indonesia Team
Mayang is a Project Officer-HR and Administration at The Development Cafe with academic background in Urban and Regional Planning. She has experience in project coordination, administration, and research support in various sectors including environment, development, and education research. Her expertise lies in ensuring the seamless execution of projects by managing day-to-day operations and supporting project needs.
As a Technical Specialist - MERL at The Development Cafe, Viona leads field research assistance by conducting enumerator training, managing logistics, and performing preliminary thematic analysis. In our ICT4D capacity-building initiatives, Viona oversees communications with over 1,000 small and medium enterprise recipients. She is a proficient linguist, specialising in translating Bahasa Indonesia and English, collecting qualitative survey data, and document analysis. She is interested in sociology and agricultural concerns. Furthermore, she has authored articles and content for the DevCAFE blog and its social media platforms.
Wibi is DevCAFE’s Information Technology and Design lead based in Bali. He is a front-end developer with over eight years of experience building websites and apps. He is also experienced in creating various multimedia products.
Wilda is a Research Fellow at the Development Cafe, primarily in charge of conducting research and MEL for various projects in the Development Cafe for the past year. She is an experienced community development researcher and practitioner, focusing on implementing socio-environmental development, gender inclusivity, and sustainability programs. Her professional journey includes significant roles in projects with UNDP, USAID, and other humanitarian organisations, where she has contributed to the initial study, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of initiatives aimed at advancing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in various regions of Indonesia. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Regional & Urban Planning from Universitas Sebelas Maret & an MSc in Social Development Practice from University College London. Wilda is highly networked with various enumerator communities in Indonesia.
As a Finance and Admin Specialist at Yayasan The Development CAFE, Daniel's role encompassed comprehensive financial management, including budgeting, forecasting, expenditure monitoring, financial reporting, and ensuring compliance with donor and internal financial policies.