Qi Cui has over 18 years of experience as a senior professional in leading global health programs. She has especially worked to develop alliances with multi-sectoral partners to catalyze investment in health for higher impact and to identify and mitigate mission critical risks. She is currently the Senior Fund Portfolio Manager at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and focuses on managing a portfolio of infections disease resilience and health system strengthening programs i...
Jun 23, 2020•1 hr 10 min
Hannah Ryder is an economist by training, a former diplomat, and has close to 20 years of experience in international development. She is the founder and CEO of Development Reimagined, a pioneering international development consultancy firm and the first Kenyan wholly foreign owned enterprise in Beijing. Development Reimagined has built a niche in providing strategic advice and practical support to African, Chinese and international stakeholders on issues from the Belt and Road Initiative, to Af...
Jun 15, 2020•41 min
Magnus Saemundsson is currently the Senior Education Specialist at SIDA, the Swedish governmental agency for development cooperation, based in Cambodia. He initially worked as a secondary school teacher and lecturer in Sweden before transitioning to the Swedish Ministry of Education. He joined SIDA in 2003 and over the years has been serving as a Senior Education Expert in the Nordic region, Tanzania, Bangladesh, Laos, Cambodia and other countries. His work with SIDA Cambodia has focused on supp...
Jun 08, 2020•59 min
Professor Shahbaz Khan is the Director of the UNESCO Regional Science Bureau for Asia and the Pacific and also serves as the UNESCO Representative for Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste. His key leadership and management areas at UNESCO have included science capacity building and policy advice across the region. He has coordinated key programs such as Water Education for Sustainable Development, Ecohydrology, water and ethics and many others. He is a foundin...
Jun 01, 2020•47 min
Devora Kestel is a senior global mental health policy expert with more than twenty-five years of international experience in Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America working on implementing and advising governments on national policies related to mental health systems. In 2000 she joined the WHO as a Mental Health Officer in post-war Kosovo and later served as WHO Representative in Albania. In both countries, she worked closely with the Ministries of Health to help establish comprehensive communi...
May 26, 2020•51 min
Arbie Baguios is currently a Programme Quality and Accountability Specialist at ActionAid UK. He studied development studies at the Ateneo de Manila University and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has worked with Save the Children, the British Red Cross, ActionAid and others in the Philippines and the UK with missions to other countries. In Sept 2019 he founded Aid Re-Imagined, an initiative to help usher the evolution of aid towards justice and effectiveness through deep...
May 18, 2020•41 min
Dr. Jeanette Gurung is a forester and gender equality and climate expert with many years of experience in the international development sector. She is the founder and Executive Director of WOCAN – Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management, a global network with over 1,300 members in 113 countries to support capacity building for women’s leadership and empowerment. She is the innovator of the W+ Standard ™ to measure, quantify and monetize impacts of projects on w...
May 11, 2020•56 min
Ann-Murray Brown is Jamaican and lived and studied in South Korea for some years before adopting The Netherlands as her second home. She is a seasoned monitoring and evaluation expert and has been involved in consultancies funded and implemented by the United Nations, the European Commission and others. She has conducted and commissioned many evaluations and designed Results-Based Management (RBM) systems to measure performance of programmes implemented in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Burundi, Colombia,...
May 04, 2020•43 min
Hugo Slim is a leading authority on the ethics of war and humanitarian action with a career that combines academia, diplomacy and operations. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict (ELAC) at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. He was Head of Policy and Humanitarian Diplomacy at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from 2015-2020 and Chief Scholar at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue from 2003-2007....
Apr 27, 2020•52 min
Pelumi Fadare is a polyglot who speaks nine languages. Her various professional experiences include working at the Spanish Embassy in Belgium, a consultancy with CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, where she supported the resourcing of young changemakers from the global south by designing and launching a pilot program called the Youth Action Lab and a current consultancy with Plan International. She is the co-founder of the social enterprise ApplicAid, an online mentorship platfor...
Apr 20, 2020•41 min
Paula Donovan is the co-director of AIDS-Free World, an international organization that advocates for institutional change with a focus on reforming powerful institutions’ responses to the social injustices that have allowed HIV to flourish. She has spent more than three decades working to advance women's and children's rights, both within the UN system—with UNICEF, UNIFEM and the Office of the UN Special Envoy on HIV and AIDS in Africa—and as a civil society advocate since she co-founded AIDS-F...
Apr 13, 2020•1 hr 10 min
Robert David Cohen is an award-winning poet, journalist, children’s rights expert and communications strategist. He is the director and co-founder of Rain Barrel Communications, a global consulting firm based in NYC. Rain Barrel gives strategic and tactical communications support and counsel to UN agencies and other international organizations, NGOs, governments, businesses and universities. Prior to founding Rain Barrel, Robert was a communication specialist for UNICEF. He worked in dozens of c...
Apr 06, 2020•49 min
Welcome to the Rethinking Development Podcast. The place where international development and humanitarian aid practitioners and leaders share their thoughts and reflections on ethics, challenges and the systemic issues that they face in their work.
Mar 29, 2020•4 min
A journalist by training, Mikel Aguirre worked as a radio reporter for the public broadcast of the Basque autonomous region in Spain before joining the UNESCO Jakarta regional office in 2011. He launched the first regional programme on Youth and Civic Engagement, where media played a central role as means to empowering youth and strengthening their voices. Since 2015, Mikel has been working at the UNESCO office in Myanmar where he is leading the organization’s programme on Freedom of Expression....
Sep 12, 2019•49 min
Paula Claycomb began her career in journalism before transitioning to the UN system in 1989. She worked with UNICEF on social change communication in Rwanda, Kenya, Afghanistan, East Timor, Sudan and many other countries. She served as Chief of the Landmines and Small Arms Group and as Senior Advisor for Communication for Development, managing the development of policies, guidelines and standards at the global level. Since her retirement from UNICEF in 2012, Paula has provided consulting service...
Sep 04, 2019•52 min
Kamla Bhasin is an Indian feminist, activist, author and facilitator. She is the Co-Founder of "Sangat" – A Global Feminist Network. She facilitates Sangat's annual South Asian Feminist Capacity Building Course on Gender, Sustainable Livelihoods, Human Rights and Peace. She is also the South Asia Coordinator of "One Billion Rising" - a global campaign to end violence against women and girls. Kamla worked with the FAO for 27 years where her worked focused on rural development and women's empowerm...
Aug 28, 2019•57 min
Andrea Burniske has more than 20 years of experience in international development, 15 of which were spent developing and leading programs and projects in countries such as Tajikistan, Peru, Colombia and Russia for various international development agencies. Her work has centered on environmentally sustainable economics and business development, women’s empowerment, and emergency responses among other areas. She is currently working at Purdue University where she is the Chief of Party for a USAID...
Aug 20, 2019•49 min
Gary Burniske is currently the Managing Director of the Center for Global Food Security within Discovery Park at Purdue University. He is responsible for the day to day management of the Center and networks with Purdue’s faculty and scientists to take a multi-disciplinary approach to tackling global challenges affecting food security. Before joining Purdue, Gary served as Country Director for Mercy Corps in Colombia and Tajikistan, and Country Director for the Institute for Sustainable Communiti...
Aug 12, 2019•49 min
Dr. Patricia Omidian is a medical anthropologist and international development consultant. She is also the co-founder of Focusing Initiatives International, an international NGO that supports the development of community wellness programs and trains trainers and local practitioners in public health approached to wellness and trauma healing. She has many years of international experience primarily in Afghanistan and Pakistan working with different organizations including Save the Children, WHO, I...
Jul 29, 2019•56 min
Paul Barker began his career as a peace corps volunteer in Iran before beginning to work with a variety of organizations primarily in humanitarian contexts in Sudan, Ethiopia, West Bank and Gaza, Afghanistan and more. Over the years he has worked on addressing the underlying causes of social issues in vulnerable areas through policy analysis, advocacy and improved program design. He has held numerous Country Director positions with CARE and Save the Children where he led programs that addressed ...
Jul 19, 2019•46 min
Richard Morgan has over 20 years of experience working in international development. He is currently the International Advocacy Director at Plan International. Prior to this he was the Director of the "child poverty" theme for Save the Children, where he co-founded and co-led the Global Coalition to End Child poverty. Previously he was a Senior Advisor to the Executive Director of UNICEF on the post 2015 Sustainable Development Agenda where he co-led a global consultation and policy analysis on ...
Jul 15, 2019•48 min
Leisa Perch is an international development consultant with over 20 years of experience providing both technical advice and managerial support to different international development agencies such as UN Women and UNDP. Her experience and expertise spans a number of areas including gender and women’s empowerment programming, gender and sustainable development, environmental management, climate change adaptation, post disaster recovery, sustainable livelihoods and more. Leisa previously set up and ...
Jul 08, 2019•59 min
Karin Sham Poo paved the way for women in senior leadership positions in both the banking sector and UNICEF. She was the first woman to achieve a managerial position at the Christiania Bank in 1970 – and ultimately served as the banks Senior Vice President from 1982 to 1985. She was recruited to UNICEF in 1985 to serve as the comptroller or finance director and in 1987 was promoted to Deputy Executive Director at the Assistant Secretary General level where she served until 2004 when she retired....
Jul 02, 2019•48 min
Aziz Froutan has 15 years of extensive experience in media, public relations and strategic communications, especially regarding women's and children's rights. He initially worked as a journalist, correspondent and producer with various media outlets such as Radio France International and the BBC from 2003 to 2010. Later, he served as a Communication Specialist for UNICEF in Afghanistan, India, Cameroon and Burundi. He speaks to us about ensuring consent, prioritizing protection, collaborating wi...
Jun 24, 2019•48 min
Gracia Hadiwijaja is a research consultant and has over 10 years of experience in the development sector in Indonesia. She has worked for the SMERU Research Institute, the World Bank, the ERIA Research Institute, the IFP Research Institute, TNP2K, and she is currently the Chief Operating Officer of a research program in Kalimantan funded by the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University. Gracia shares her personal reflections on rethinking both impact and failure, acknowl...
Jun 04, 2019•50 min
Dr. Akiko Maeda is a health economist with 25 years of experience in international development. She has held various technical and managerial positions at the World Bank, OECD, Asian Development Bank, UNICEF and UNDP, and was involved with policy analyses and investment programs on a wide range of topics, including: girls’ literacy and immunization in low income countries such as Yemen and Cambodia; health insurance regulation and fiscal policy analysis in middle income countries such as Egypt a...
May 30, 2019•57 min
