Howard is Chief Executive Officer of the Campbell Collaboration. Previously he was the founding Executive Director of the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) and before that led the impact evaluation programme of the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group. He started his career as an academic researcher at the Institute of Social Studies in the Hague, and the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. As an academic he leans toward work with policy relevance, and working in the policy field leans toward academic rigour as a basis for policy and practice. His other interests are running and walking, preferably long distances in remote places, and reading English history.