One Acre Fund supplies smallholder farmers with the tools and financing they need to grow their way out of hunger and poverty. We work with 1.3 million farmers in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia. Instead of giving handouts, we invest in farmers to generate a permanent gain in farm income. My role is to make sure the pressing needs of Africa’s smallholder farmers are addressed comprehensively in policy and funding conversations outside the continent.

I worked with an amazing team of 60 people building alignment around One Acre Fund’s work with host governments in our countries of operation, and built powerful champions to protect our rapid growth in the politically-sensitive agriculture space.I also developed policy collaborations with African governments, finding ways to improve the business environment for smallholders and improving their lives and livelihoods.

Bridge is solving a key gap in educating the poorest kids in the world: providing a high-quality, low cost ($6 on average) product as an alternative to struggling public systems. It uses a cutting edge model that leverages teaching computers to ensure accountability and support quality, and runs its schools using smart phones and mobile money. It is the largest private provider of primary and early childhood in the world, with more than 400 schools in Kenya, serving 100,000 enrolled students, and has now expanded into Liberia, Uganda and India. Some of the things I did:- Built relationships with Members of Parliament to support long-term legislative and regulatory change in Kenya.- Led discussions with key County governments in Kenya, leveraging newly devolved powers to start building Public Private Partnerships between Bridge and the Counties.- Registered Bridge schools with the Ministry of Education, leading a team that successfully registered schools and built relationships with dozens of local officials.- Supervised the Recruiting and Training team until a dedicated director was hired, which trained 1000-person teacher teacher cohorts several times a year

IPA is a global NGO which designs and evaluate development programs, testing what works and does not work to solve the needs of the poor, and providing hands-on assistance to bring successful programs to scale.Some of the things I did:• Led growth of IPA’s largest country office from one to five offices, with staff increasing from 150 to 600 and annual project expenditure increasing from $3.5million to $8million. • Led restructuring of the country office to align it with IPA’s global priorities, improving project oversight structures and planning the spin-off of non-core programs into an independent organization. • Provided oversight and support to over 20 projects involving both rigorous impact evaluations and large-scale interventions across multiple technical areas, including agriculture, education, and health. • Advocated for evidence-based programming with partners and government policy-makers.

Facilitated a working group of 25 mid-career professionals as part of an intensive negotiation skills training course in the Program on Negotiation. Worked with participants to prepare for negotiations by simulating and analyzing diverse strategies and approaches.

GI-Net educated and mobilized support for U.S. policies that would help protect civilians in Darfur. It is now part of United to End Genocide.Some of what I did:• Coordinated work of GI-Net’s outreach to over 10,000 members and was a primary liaison with partner organizations• Mobilized constituents and worked with a team to organize successful legislative campaigns, including several that contributed to the passage of legislation to fund the UNAMID peacekeepers and the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act.• Helped develop strategy for the “Vote for Darfur” campaign to raise the profile of the Darfur conflict in the 2008 US presidential race and facilitated training and advocacy workshops in Iowa and New Hampshire.

The ACTION Support Centre (ASC) is the Africa regional hub of a global network of organizations and individuals committed to transforming conflict, ACTION for Conflict Transformation.Some of what I did:• Part of management team that designed and monitored the activities of a project to build the capacity of 17 heads of peacebuilding NGOs from across Africa. • Developed a conflict resolution workshop module and used it to facilitate workshops with community organizations across South Africa.• Researched and wrote part of a training pack to be used as a facilitation tool for workshops on good governance and democracy.