Alex Rees Email & Phone Number

Haywards Heath, Gb

Brighton And Hove, England, United Kingdom

Thrilled to be chairing the board of Trustees at the Clock Tower Sanctuary, working with a wonderful team that supports young homeless people in Brighton and Hove.

Haywards Heath, England, United Kingdom

Empower amazing people across the business to deliver impact, nurture our wonderful culture and keep our finances strong.

Haywards Heath, England, United Kingdom

Wasafiri is a consultancy, incubator and institute with global reach and a track record of systems impact. For a food systems and inclusive growth portfolio I led strategy development, business development and programme team delivery, managing staff and consultants. I brought business-wide executive leadership to Wasafiri, improving management systems and risk management (e.g. for Covid-19). I led multi-stakeholder initiatives to enable leaders and organisations to tackle complex challenges using systems change approaches. Examples include:Establishing the African Food Fellowship. I co-lead this ambitious initiative along with colleagues from the Centre for Development Innovation (WUR / NL), and supported by the IKEA Foundation.Collaborative partnership with the Gates Foundation, AGRA and civil society organisations to strengthen the African Union's flagship performance and accountability mechanism with member states for agricultural transformation, poverty reduction, nutrition and social protection.Headed a secretariat for USAID supporting a large group of institutional donors and international organisations (20+) over two years to improve policy and implementation support for the African Union's flagship Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP).Helped inspire the scale up of poverty graduation in Kenya. This included the first national evidence review and conference, and instigating the first ever county level policy on poverty graduation to eliminate extreme poverty, with the Open Society Foundations.Orchestrated a new WWF strategy in the Congo Basin to manage scale up of cocoa through a multi-stakeholder systemic effort; and co-created WWF's new continental 'Africa Food Future Initiative'.Managed annual reviews of UKAID investments in AgDevCo and the SAGCOT Centre Ltd.

Haywards Heath, England, United Kingdom

The African Food Fellowship is a collaborative and visionary initiative to empower food systems leaders in Africa to take action together. With new forms of support emerging leaders from private, public, and civic spaces are jointly shaping the ambition, agendas and market dynamics to transform Africa’s food systems to be healthy, inclusive and environmentally sustainable. The Fellowship was instigated by Wasafiri, the Centre for Development Innovation at WUR and the IKEA Foundation.

Bristol, United Kingdom

I was an engaged Trustee on the Board of Tree Aid, a medium size and fast growing international development and environment UK based charitable organisation. I chaired the Programmes Advisory Group drawing in external partners to improve Tree Aid's impact; I chaired the Fundraising Standards Committee; and I supported CEO and Director recruitment.

London, United Kingdom

I led the development of GAIN's programme pipeline including public / private and other innovative partnerships in Asia and Africa, working across the organisation at all levels, to secure impact at scale on food and nutrition security and new resources.I accelerated the growth of organisational income by >50% over two years by improving the organisation's programme funding strategy and evolving the internal fundraising system, influencing peer directors, and the CEO to coalesce around a collective agenda.I convened GAIN's approach that broadened the donor base by 50%, opened up new support from philanthropic foundations in the UK and secured new substantive funding with priority donors e.g. an $11m contract funded by the Gates Foundation. I shaped the approach and quality of GAIN's new large-scale programmes and configured internal review and approval mechanisms to enhance the rigour and overall quality of new programmes, including leading preparation for the Board's Programme Committee.I was responsible for GAIN's London office and managed the programme funding team ensuring a productive and enjoyable working environment for 25+ staff overseeing a range of systems, human resources and facilities. I represented GAIN externally including live on BBC World global news, with donors, partners and UN partners.

As a member of the Pool of International Experts, and working in a voluntary capacity, I reviewed proposals and provided grounded recommendations over four years to enable funding decisions by the Food and Business Applied Research Fund, with funds originating in the NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research), Netherlands Government.

London, United Kingdom

I led the design and successful implementation of an ambitious strategy that delivered nutrition and food security outcomes for children and their families in more than 20 countries. I led a wonderful high performing team, and enabled Save the Children to reach many more children by quadrupling the thematic portfolio size to over £200m, while balancing growth with a higher quality of implementation. I encouraged innovation and system investments that generated high quality evidence on what works, and influenced scale up of cost-effective approaches.I raised the ambition of programmes to deliver rigorous evidence and broadened partnerships including with world-class research collaborations such as Transform Nutrition and with the private sector on new food products such as with GlaxoSmithKline.I progressed the organisation’s notable policy and advocacy achievements on food security and nutrition including an active leadership role developing the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement by supporting its formation and forming the international SUN Civil Society Network.I built effective networks and influenced leading nutrition and food security institutions and policy-makers by producing policy reports, briefings and communications materials to influence change. I led or co-authored Save the Children’s key policy analysis and reports e.g. Hungry for Change and Livelihoods at the Limit.I represented Save the Children effectively at all levels including with the UK Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, International Development Select Committee, SUN and civil society platforms and chairing the international food security assessment partnership (the IPC) alongside media representation.

London, United Kingdom

I provided food and nutrition security and livelihood technical assistance to Save the Children country offices in Asia and Africa securing innovative strategies, programme design and impact for children.I engaged effectively in advocacy, representation and communications on food and nutrition security with governments, UN agencies and networks included leading institutional relationships and securing influencing successes e.g. with the UN World Food Programme.I supervised thematic staff focusing on food security, livelihood recovery and nutrition in emergencies with significant growth in the portfolio, quality and scale of intervention and generation of evidence on what works.I supported the analysis of international architecture in food security and nutrition along with the inception and delivery of policy reports and briefing papers.I developed programme policy on food security and livelihoods including integration with nutrition.

London, United Kingdom

I developed CARE International UK’s engagement strategy in the East and Central Africa region and performed all aspects of grant management between country-based programme implementers and donors.I coordinated the development and submission of multi-sectoral emergency and development programme proposals for donors in collaboration with ten CARE country offices and the regional office growing the portfolio with innovative programmes.

Swaziland

I strengthened coherent and better resourced cross-government and inter-agency analysis and recommendations on policy and programmes for government, international agencies and civil society organisations by providing credible and timely national assessments of risk to food and nutrition security.I elevated the quality of field studies, compilation of information, report writing and communications by playing catalytic and entrepreneurial role building capacity of the National Vulnerability Assessment Committee institution and members. I was seconded full-time from Save the Children and was based in the Ministry of Agriculture.

Angola

I worked with provincial and national actors to improve the approaches and methodologies for assessing food security status. I designed a new post-conflict food security programme for internally displaced persons and sought funding from donors. I established a provincial food security co-ordination group with NGO, UN and Government partners.

South Sudan

I designed and managed food security and emergency relief projects funded by USAID / DFID in Bahr el Ghazal Region of Southern Sudan supervising large food security and operations teams. I achieved significant impact on children and their families. I innovated to evolve the effectiveness of programmes for example through new post-distribution monitoring reviews and innovative interventions such as seed fairs.

Ethiopia

I co-ordinated the planning, partnership with government, UN and NGOs, and logistics of an emergency health and food aid programme leading a team of national and expatriate staff. I assisted with co-ordination of health and immunisation interventions and oversaw implementation, budgetary management, donor liaison and report writing.

I led an ambitious multi-million dollar community-based housing reconstruction project in a fragile and insecure context in Kosovo and effectively mobilised a large team of national staff to deliver it in a pressured environment and timeframe.

London, United Kingdom

Master Of Arts (Ma), Environment And Development, Pass With Merit

Bachelor Of Arts (Ba), Modern History With Economics, 2.1

Majored on African history and development economics