Senior Change Designer

Background

I joined Forum at the tail-end of 2021, following nearly four years in East Africa working with SMEs, communities and producers on business model innovation, access to market for commodities, and livelihood development. My time there centered on understanding how genuine impact might be achieved through bespoke interventions building incomes, equity, and resilience, in a wide-ranging role that included managing a team of young professionals like myself. By the time I left, that team had grown into a dynamic and adaptive core which continues to deliver change in their country and communities. Before Kigali, I had been in Copenhagen, studying for my master's in migration studies, with the intention of understanding the motivations and factors that contribute toward human movement, whilst working as a remote consultant on a number of projects. Prior to that, I moved from grassroots humanitarianism to consultancy to politics, a quite twisting, convoluted route.

Myriad experiences provided a sense of the complexity and disruption that each subject matter I had worked on had. It seemed natural that I joined Forum in a moment of great disruption, immediately feeling that this organisation asked rare questions and pioneered even rarer genuine ambition. I now work in Sustainable Value Chains and Livelihoods, a culmination of my experiences in East Africa and elsewhere, experiences which help foreground objectives of system change within the complex realities of producers and supply chain actors.

Dream project

I’m halfway to doing it! Right now I am supporting the design of an inquiry focusing on thinking about what the value chains of the future might look like. Having worked in coffee and energy value chains, I’ve become fascinated by the system of trade that underpins the modern global economy. Taking innovations, new business models or mindsets from the micro, and modelling them at the macro, or workshopping with diverse voices and perspectives to understand the practical implications, before then taking it to market, is what really excites me.

What floats my boat outside work

I’m an easy man to please. I love a good game of chess, a walk with my dog across a blustery field on a spring day, a good roast dinner in a well-warmed pub, and Liverpool FC.