Who We AreGlobal Leadership

Diana Fletschner Chief Program Officer

Why I am passionate about Landesa’s mission:

Working to strengthen women’s land rights around the world can be both overwhelming and empowering. Overwhelming because it makes it impossible to ignore the crippling hardships experienced by so many. Empowering because it offers a powerful and foundational avenue to overcome some of these challenges.

ABOUT DIANA:

Diana Fletschner provides strategic direction and oversight for all of Landesa’s programs. Fletschner is a development economist with over 25 years of experience teaching, conducting research, designing programs and tools, monitoring and evaluating interventions, mentoring, and conducting strategic advocacy with a special focus on rural women. Fletschner joined Landesa as a Sr. Gender Expert in 2010 and has directed Landesa’s global Research, Evaluation and Learning efforts for the past several years. She has co-led sector-wide efforts that resulted in the successful inclusion of land rights among Sustainable Development Goals’ targets and indicators, creating both an ambitious commitment to ensure land rights for all and a global mandate to generate land rights data.  Fletschner has conducted work in 21 countries. Her work has been published in the Journal of Development Economics, World Development, the Journal of Development Studies, and the Journal of Socio-Economics. Fletschner has been recognized with awards for her technical work, her mentoring and her teaching.

Areas of Expertise:

  • Qualitative and quantitative research
  • Generation and use of data
  • Monitoring and evaluation
  • Research methods
  • Land tenure policy
  • Women’s land rights
  • Policy advocacy and communications
  • Participatory processes
  • Rural development
  • Training and capacity building support
  • Microfinance

Education:

  • Ph.D. Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison (MacArthur-Global Studies Fellow; Taylor Hibbard Doctoral Dissertation Award).
  • B.A. (summa cum laude), Economics and Computer Science, Universidad Nacional de Asunción-Paraguay.

International Experience:

  • Argentina
  • China
  • Colombia
  • Ecuador
  • Ethiopia
  • Ghana
  • Kenya
  • India
  • Liberia
  • Malawi
  • Mali
  • Myanmar
  • Nicaragua
  • Paraguay
  • Peru
  • Russia
  • Rwanda
  • Tanzania
  • Uganda
  • Vietnam
  • USA

Languages:

  • Spanish (native)
  • English (fluent)