Our Team
Maria Apoo Oitamong
Overview
Maria Apoo Oitamong serves Malkia in a dual capacity: as a member of the Board of Trustees, providing governance oversight on people strategy, organisational capacity, and institutional sustainability; and as People and Institutional Capacity Lead, directing Malkia's human resource architecture across both arms of the hybrid model.
She brings over two decades of experience in talent management, organisational development, and administrative leadership across Uganda's civil society, international development, and health sectors.
Career Background
Her career spans senior HR roles at two flagship USAID-funded international development institutions: as Lead Recruiter for Africa and the Middle East at RTI International, and as HR Coordinator at Management Sciences for Health. In both settings, she built the people systems and governance frameworks that enable complex, multi-country research and policy organisations to function with integrity, efficiency, and compliance, precisely the institutional conditions that a hybrid think tank requires to operate credibly across both its arms.
Operational Role at Malkia
In her operational role, Maria leads people strategy across both arms of Malkia's hybrid model.
Policy Arm
She manages the recruitment and development of analytical, policy, and communications talent.
Field Lab
She governs the HR architecture of Malkia's field engagement teams, ensuring that field researchers are selected for methodological discipline, trained in consent protocols and research ethics, and managed to the evidence quality standards that protect Malkia's analytical independence.
Board of Trustees Role
In her Board of Trustees role, she ensures that Malkia's people governance meets the institutional standards that USAID-affiliated and Atlas Network partner organisations are expected to maintain.
Her experience at USAID-funded multi-country institutions, where research integrity, human resource governance, and operational compliance are non-negotiable, is directly applicable to Malkia's hybrid model, where the boundary between the two arms must be institutionally enforced, not merely philosophically intended. The Field Lab's 30% budget cap and evidence-only mandate are governance rules: Maria's function ensures those rules are embedded in how Malkia's people are recruited, inducted, managed, and held accountable.
Education & Qualifications
- Master of Arts, Makerere University
- Bachelor's Degree, Makerere University
- Postgraduate Diploma in HR Management, Uganda Management Institute