Secretariat - ChildFund Alliance

Joohi Haleem

Senior Adviser, Global Programmes, Partnership and Engagement

Joohi Haleem

Senior Adviser, Global Programmes, Partnership and Engagement

Cecilia Carolina Delaney Mendez

Senior Adviser, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning

Cecilia Carolina Delaney Mendez

Senior Adviser, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning

Natalie Rinehart

Administrative Support Specialist

Interim Secretary General

Paul Bode

Paul Bode has over 35 years experience in child-focused international development. He worked with Plan International from 1989-2010 in various countries and positions in Latin America including Regional Director. He also occupied the position of Program Director at Plan International Headquarters in the UK.

After leaving Plan, Paul joined ChildFund International USA where he worked from 2010-2024. At ChildFund International, he occupied the positions of Regional Director Latin America, Vice-President Program Development, and Vice-President Global Operations.

He also represented the ChildFund Alliance as Steering Committee Chair for Joining Forces, a strategic collaboration of the 6 largest child-focused INGOs.

Paul has lived and worked in Netherlands, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Panama, UK and USA. He has a Master’s degree in social anthropology from the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. Is his free time, Paul enjoys football, being a passionate fan of Feyenoord and the Dutch team, tennis and fishing. He is currently the chair of the Aeolus-Oledo tennis club in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Senior Advisor, Advocacy & Policy

Ryan De Souza

Ryan De Souza has worked in the advocacy and policy space for more than a decade. Throughout his career, he has represented the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, always with the focus of turning legislative policy and framework into action and implementation.

He joined ChildFund Alliance in 2021 as the organization’s Advocacy & Policy Advisor. Currently, he is leading ChildFund’s global online safety campaign for children, WEB Safe & Wise: Creating a better digital world with children. Launched in 2022, WEB Safe & Wise focuses on strengthening protections for children online, while also helping them safely navigate the digital world.

Prior to joining ChildFund Alliance, Ryan worked as an Advisor at the Permanent Mission of Trinidad and Tobago to the United Nations where he served on various committees at the UN General Assembly. These included the Economic and Financial Committee (Second Committee) and the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (Third Committee). While at the Mission, he worked on various initiatives to promote and protect the rights of children and the advancement of women through the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.

Ryan holds a Master’s Degree in International Trade Policy and a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations from the University of the West Indies.

Senior Adviser, Global Programmes, Partnership and Engagement

Joohi Haleem

Joohi is a qualified humanitarian and development practitioner with more than 17 years of experience in the sector, both in the field and at HQ level. One of her specific areas of expertise is working with Human Rights Based Approaches (HRBA), Leave No One Behind (LNOB) and Humanitarian-Development-Peace (HDP) Nexus approaches for community-driven resilience-building and sustainable livelihoods development.

Over the years, Joohi has supported multi-sectoral resilience-building programmes in various fragile and protracted crises in diverse locations such as Sri Lanka (post-tsunami), Afghanistan, Syria, and Lebanon. She has extensive experience handling multiple donor portfolios and projects funded by a broad range of institutional and non-institutional donors. Joohi has continually worked to find the most appropriate mechanisms to enable local communities and local civil society actors to claim their rights and entitlements, to build resilience to shocks and crises, and to become strong agents of change.

In her previous capacity as thematic focal point for the HDP (Triple) Nexus, over the past several years, she has been an active member of various NGO coordination and advocacy networks in Brussels and abroad. She has consistently worked to build partnerships with a range of government and civil society stakeholders at all levels of engagement on critical issues such as the growing nexus between fragility-conflict-climate. She has been a Taskforce Member of the Danish NGO Network Global Focus’s two Deep Dive studies on the HDP Nexus, as well as of a Symposium on Fragility organized with the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, IFRC and USAID.

Joohi holds a Master of Science degree from the Development Planning Unit, University College London and a Bachelor of Architecture from the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan.

Adviser, EU Partnership and Engagement

Rebekka Perdereau

Rebekka Perdereau joins the ChildFund Alliance as EU Partnership Advisor, bringing more than twelve years of experience in donor relations, resource mobilization, and EU partnerships. Based in Brussels, she has previously worked at UNICEF’s EU Office and with country offices worldwide on funding strategies, proposal development, donor reporting, and relationship management with major public donors, including the European Commission. She previously led resource mobilization efforts in UNICEF Malawi, managing a diverse portfolio of public and private sector partners, and supporting technical teams to secure new funding.

Rebekka also brings private sector experience, having advised start‑ups and entrepreneurs on EU funding opportunities and partnership strategies. She is well‑versed in the Brussels policy landscape, staying closely attuned to political developments and engagement with EU institutions and decision‑makers. She holds a Master’s degree in Multilingual Communication with a specialization in International Relations from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, as well as a Bachelor’s degree in European Studies from Royal Holloway, University of London.

She believes that, in the context of mounting funding constraints and donor fatigue, the Alliance’s greatest strength will be its collective action, leveraging multi‑member collaboration as a strong value proposition to maximize impact of funds for children.

Senior Adviser, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning

Cecilia Carolina Delaney Mendez

For more than 20 years, Cecilia has worked across international development and humanitarian action, driven by a deep conviction that every child deserves the conditions to thrive — and that rigorous evidence is one of the most powerful tools to make that happen. She has dedicated her career to ensuring that what is learned in the field reaches the highest levels of strategic decision-making, translating data across diverse contexts, cultures, and organizations into insights that drive transformative collective action for children, families, and communities. Cecilia’s key areas of expertise include evaluation, MEL framework design, data aggregation and analysis, strategic KPI development, governance and board-level reporting, child-sensitive humanitarian programming, and the use of evidence in advocacy. She has led evaluations and strengthened MEL systems across more than 20 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. Before joining ChildFund Alliance, Cecilia worked with UNICEF, UN Women, UNFPA, PAHO, Save the Children, HelpAge International, and the International Indigenous Women’s Forum, among other organizations. Her academic background spans political science, international relations, and anthropology (Universidad del Salvador, FLACSO-Argentina, and University of Leiden, the Netherlands). She holds a Master’s in International Humanitarian Action (Universities of Uppsala, Sweden, and Deusto, Spain), and a Specialization in Leadership and Social Innovation at ESADE Business School, Spain. She is a Spanish and Argentine national, fluent in Spanish, English, and French.

Administrative Support Specialist

Natalie Rinehart

Natalie Rinehart has a diverse professional background in operations, administration, client relations, and organizational management. Throughout her career, she has focused on improving day-to-day operations, coordinating complex administrative processes, and providing the organizational support needed to help teams work effectively.

She joined ChildFund Alliance in 2026 as an Administrative Support Specialist, providing operational and administrative support to the Secretariat and its global membership. In her role, Natalie supports a broad range of activities across the Alliance, including governance and committee coordination, meetings and events, international travel, financial administration, communications, website management, and member support.

Prior to joining ChildFund Alliance, Natalie held roles in operations, client success, contracts, property and community association management, and administrative support. Her experience has included managing organizational processes, coordinating with diverse stakeholders, overseeing contracts and financial matters, and developing systems to improve efficiency and organization.

Earlier in her career, Natalie was a professional golfer in the United States. Her experience competing professionally helped develop the discipline, adaptability, attention to detail, and problem-solving skills that she has carried throughout her professional career.

Originally from the United States and now based in Spain, Natalie works remotely with colleagues and ChildFund Alliance members around the world.