Marilise holds a Master’s degree in Development Management and a Bachelor’s degree in Modern Languages.

Marilise is a highly experienced consultant in the international aid sector. Over the course of her 25 year career, she has managed and evaluated programmes in the fields of human mobility; protection; food security and livelihoods; cash-based interventions; disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation; WASH; environment and natural resource management; education; shelter and housing; gender equality; child and youth development. She has worked in complex, volatile contexts related to conflict, and post-disaster settings.

Marilise has extensive experience in Disaster Risk Reduction. Over her career, she has guided the integration of DRR and climate change adaptation into the policies, strategies and programmes of NGOs, donors, the Red Cross/Crescent, governmental and inter-governmental entities. Highlights include founding Oxfam’s Risk Reduction and Adaptation unit and leading its first DRR and Adaptation strategy; publishing Toward Resilience: A Practitioner’s Guide to DRR and CCA (2013) for a consortium of six leading development agencies, developing the IFRC’s guidance and training pack for national societies working to strengthen community resilience, Road Map to Resilience (2016, updated 2021), and many other practitioner-oriented resources.

As an independent consultant, Marilise currently supports NGOs, donors, multi-agency consortia, and UN agencies in the areas of strategic planning, capacity-building, evaluation and learning, policy and tool development, and research.