Development specialist, entrepreneur, PROFESSOR.

I am a development specialist, instructor and entrepreneur with 19 year of work experience and I currently live in Paris. I work at the intersection between private, public sector and academia. I focus much of my work and research on how to make organizations and teams more agile/innovative/effective and learning-centered.

I have been advising international organizations (such as the World Bank) and governments in Africa, Asia and Europe on issues related to public sector innovation, monitoring & evaluation, governance, leadership, knowledge and change management.

I started my career working on international development by designing, implementing and evaluating development projects mainly in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe working in several international organizations and NGOs. I spent 5 years working with the World Bank in Washington, DC working on many public sector projects. The experience working with the World Bank and with governments all over the world helped me learn more about development issues but also gave me an opportunity to better understand the organizational and leadership problems government and organizations face in order to work more efficiently and innovatively.

I strongly believe that innovation and creativity are the key for organizations to remain competitive and survive in today’s environment, given the complex challenges they have to face. After leaving DC, I became an innovation evangelist by researching and working on instilling innovative ideas and creativity into organizational processes and on making people more entrepreneurial. While continuing to advise the World Bank as well as governments, I started working at a Paris startup where I am learning about how to practically do innovation and I also started teaching innovation and design at two universities: SciencesPo’s Paris School of International Affairs and the Paris College of Arts. I also developed one of the first digital transformation and agility Executive Education courses specifically targeting African countries at SciencesPo.

I hold a MA in Governance and Development from IDS at Sussex University, UK (ranked as number 1 university in the world in development studies in 2015) and professional certificates from several universities on evaluation and development (IPDET/Carlton, Canada) and leadership (Harvard, US). In parallel to that, I keep learning by observing, experimenting and trying new approaches himself as my firm belief is that the best way to learn is to “learn by doing”.