Rethinking Development Podcast

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 TM to measure, quantify and monetize impacts of projects on women, through the use of a results-based financing approach, providing ways for companies, governments, organizations and individuals to confidently drive and measure social and economic empowerment for women. She has managed projects for the Asian Development Bank (Harnessing Climate Change Mitigation to Benefit Women) and other UN and bilateral development agencies and led and served on numerous committees such as The Forest Dialogue Steering Committee, Gender Expert of the CGIAR Participatory Research and Gender Analysis Program, Advisor to the Forest Stewardship Council, FAO’s Policy Committee on Incentives for Ecosystem Services, and UNFCCC’s Expert Group on Gender and Climate and more. She speaks to us about being a female forester, pursuing gender mainstreaming in male dominated organizations, her Phd thesis on the same topic, the devaluation of women's labour in natural resource management, being motivated by frustration, innovating new standards, the struggle for financing gender and climate projects, working across sectors and silos, inclusive feminine leadership, climate reliance, nature based solutions, the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic and much more. She joins us from Hawaii, USA.

Dr. Sabina Faiz Rashid is the Dean of the BRAC James P. Grant School of Public Health at BRAC University in Bangladesh. Dr. Rashid specializes in ethnographic and qualitative research with a focus on urban slum communities and marginalized groups. She's particularly interested in examining the impact of structural and intersectional factors on the ability of those populations to realize their health rights and access to services. In 2008, she founded the Center for Gender, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, and in 2013, co-founded the Center for Urban Equity and Health. Both focus on research, capacity building and influencing program designs and policies in Bangladesh.

We speak about:

• BRAC’s approach to development
• co-thinking and co-creating with communities
• unpacking assumptions about the ‘Global South’
• solution-based thinking
• competency based learning
• building a youth friendly research culture
• decolonizing global health - and much more!

She joins us from Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Priscillia Kounkou Hoveyda is a human rights lawyer who has a decade of experience working with UNICEF other UN agencies and NGOs in the US, France, DR Congo, Mauritania, Nigeria and other countries. Her work has focused on strengthening national policies for the most vulnerable populations around the world, including working on child protection issues in emergencies. She has led the release and reintegration of children associated to armed groups and forces, incarcerated children as well as survivors of sexual violence. She is also a writer and one of the co-founders of the Collective for Black Iranians. She speaks to us about :

• double standards in law
• power inequalities in securing funding
• the white/western savior industrial complex
• questioning the relevance of big HQs
• advocating governments
• being declared persona non grata
• applying a constructively critical lens
• hierarchies amongst staff
• activism as a way of life - and much more!

She joins us from California, USA.

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.

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. After retirement she served as Interim Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict at the Under Secretary General level in 2005 and later as UNICEF special Envoy to the Caribbean on a part time basis from 2005-2010. She speaks to us about what it was like to be the first woman at a director level in UNICEF, her experiences working with the legendary Jim Grant, the importance of multilateral cooperation, the qualities of a good leader, and much more. She joins us from New York City, USA.