Ms. Baljit Wadhwa, a Canadian national, has more than 22 years of experience in environment and sustainability assessment. Baljit joined the GEF Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) in 2010 as a Senior Evaluation Officer where she leads evaluative work on cross-cutting and thematic topics including private sector and civil society engagement. She has also led country-level evaluations in Tanzania, Eritrea, Morocco and Tajikistan. In this work Baljit endeavored also to build national evaluation capacities working alongside country counter-parts and national voluntary organizations of professional evaluators (VOPEs). From 2010-2012 she was the team leader for IEO Performance Evaluations, responsible for the Annual Performance Reports.

Previously, as the Monitoring & Evaluation Lead with the International Finance Corporation (IFC)'s Sustainable Business Advisory Services, Baljit advised Program Leaders on results metrics and frameworks for projects that engaged the private sectors in the broad areas of climate change mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity markets and labor & social standards. As an independent consultant, Baljit has also undertaken several evaluations of development projects/programs on behalf of international agencies (e.g. CIDA, World Food Programme, IFC) national government departments and community development agencies. In addition to her experience as an evaluator, Baljit has worked alongside the financial community as a Senior Sustainability Analyst with Calvert Investments, reviewing publicly listed domestic and emerging market companies for environmental, social and governance performance and alongside the infrastructure, oil, gas and mining industries, carrying out stakeholder engagements as part of environmental and socio-economic impact assessments for proposed energy, mining & transportation projects. Her focus was on community consultations and facilitating use of indigenous knowledge in impact studies.

Baljit holds a Master of Environment Studies, with a focus on biodiversity conservation, from University of Waterloo and Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biology from University of Calgary and has certificates in “Environmental Economics for Development Policy” from the World Bank Institute and Climate Change Risks and Opportunities for the Finance Sector from UNEP-FI. She is also a LEED Accredited Professional with the US Green Building Council.