Amy Henderson Riley, DrPH, is a global social and behavior change communication researcher, who specializes in entertainment-education as a strategy for individual and social change. Amy has overseen research in 19 countries across continents covering a range of topics including maternal and child health, family planning, child protection, and violence. In her role at Population Media Center (PMC), Amy oversees all research and evaluation activities from contributing to proposals, to overseeing monitoring activities, and conducting outcome and impact evaluation.

She is dedicated to building capacity among staff and partners to understand how, why, and when monitoring and evaluation activities can strengthen programs. The thread of her work is to make research and evaluation tangible and accessible to a variety of stakeholders – not research for research’s sake, but research we can continually apply and learn from.

Before PMC, Amy was a professor, and she holds an adjunct faculty appointment in public health. Amy completed a postdoctoral fellowship in communication, a doctorate in public health, a master’s in health education, and a bachelor’s degree in musical theater. She went to a performing arts school from 4th grade through high school and spent several years in New York City as an actor and working in television and film production. Her first media job was as an audience page at The Late Show with David Letterman, where she met a fellow page who is now her husband. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and their three daughters.