Susan Abbott is an independent consultant who specializes in working with non-profit organizations, universities, and donors in the areas of media development, civil society assistance, and digital rights. Abbott provides consulting services for facilitating workshops and training programs; grant writing; monitoring and evaluation, and organizational capacity building. As a grant writer and M&E consultant, Abbott has experience with USAID, US Department of State, and a variety of private foundation donors. She has worked with a variety of NGOs on developing M&E tracking systems, increasing institutional capacity around M&E, and on designing M&E frameworks. In addition, Abbott works with NGOs, especially small- to medium-size NGOs, on developing a fundraising strategy, finding partners for large grant applications, and developing concept papers and ideas into fully-funded projects.
Abbott has recently consulted for Access Now, Albany Associates, the Center for International Media Assistance, Fondation Hirondelle, International Business & Technical Consultants, Inc., Media Legal Defence Initiative, and Thomson Foundation. Abbott has work experience in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Jordan, Mozambique, Serbia, Sudan, and Somalia as well on a number of global/international advocacy and network projects. She is particularly interested in conflict and post-conflict media development environments as well as in supporting projects that seek to develop local and regional advocacy strategies related to promoting freedom of expression and access to information.
In addition to her consulting practice, Abbott is a lecturer in the Department of Communication, University of Colorado Denver, and a non-resident fellow at the Center for Media, Data, and Society at Central European University, Budapest.
Previously, Abbott worked for the Center for Global Communication Studies, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Internews, and IREX. Abbott has authored many papers, managed the production of several M&E toolkits, and facilitated workshops, summer schools and conferences on approaches to monitoring and evaluation of media development, digital rights, and civil society advocacy, including the Caux Guiding Principles on M&E, the Budapest Summer School on Media Development and Democratization: Understanding and Implementing Monitoring and Evaluation Programs, Internet Governance, Civil Society and Communication Policy Advocacy, and the edited book Measures of Press Freedom and Media Contributions to Development: Evaluating the Evaluators (Peter Lang, 2011). She is the author of a recent CIMA publication entitled Rethinking Public Service Broadcasting’s Place in International Media Development. Abbott received her BA from American University, and her MA from Central European University.