During a career in development in the UK and internationally, the focus of Jim’s professional activities has increasingly been the social, managerial and governance (i.e. ‘people’) aspects of projects and programmes.  His early work in infrastructure engineering had a strongly practical task focus.  In addition to the project planning and management skills he learnt then, he has added specialist relationship skills in participative processes and multi-party decision making and multi-cultural management.  Jim is a practitioner with considerable experience throughout the project cycle - in planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation - and the dissemination of learning.  He has extensive international experience, leading teams in emergencies as well in post-war rehabilitation and development situations.  In his work in UK development and abroad, he prepares projects through a deliberative, consensus-building approach involving those affected and has developed systems of analysing and monitoring programmes in innovative ways, with very much a utilization focus.  In evaluations for the EC, as with other funders and implementing NGOs, he has focused especially on lesson learning and recommendations for the improvement of future activities.  He runs awaydays and facilitates change management in social and organisational contexts at various scales through constructive engagement of diverse interest groups, using participatory methods and conflict-transformation.  He is a European Federation of Quality Management trained assessor and Action Learning set facilitator.  He has a Masters degree in Planning and Management for Development and a first degree in civil engineering.

Tom has lived and worked internationally all his life.  He grew up in Africa, studied and worked in Europe, has travelled extensively and now bases himself in Australia and South East Asia.  The focus of his professional work is public infrastructure provision and management, particularly rural and urban water supply and sanitation as well as pollution monitoring.  His expertise includes institutional capacity building and training, financial and economic appraisals, needs assessments, feasibility studies, project design, monitoring and evaluation.  Much of his early career was spent in West and Southern Africa, including five years as a lecturer and research leader at the University of Zimbabwe.  He has worked extensively in India and Sri Lanka, Indo-China and the Pacific-rim countries, as well as Eastern Europe and Australia.  

Tom is currently appointed to the pool of expert consultants for the Philippines Australia Governance Facility and is registered with RedR (Register of Engineers for Disaster Relief) for emergency relief work.  He has humanitarian aid experience with RedR, NGOs and ECHO.  Recently he was team leader of an ADB evaluation of fourteen watsan projects in Indonesia, has evaluated IDP return and rehabilitation projects in northern Uganda (watsan, health/ hygiene, HIV/AIDS components) and was rural infrastructure specialist for the 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake damage assessment (AusAID).  For this and for recent monitoring in tsunami affected areas (Aceh Nias, Indonesia) he stressed the use of participatory methodologies.  He is co-founder of an Australian NGO concerned with refugee issues and is a director of The People Strategists.  He has a Masters Degree in Water Resources Technology with a Diploma in Applied Economics. 

A political scientist by background, Roberta’s career in development and humanitarian aid remains focussed on the social and socio-political aspects of countries in crisis.  Her special expertise is in humanitarian aid in emergencies and in rehabilitation of communities and the return and reintegration of refugees and internally displaced persons.  She has extensive experience in the Former Yugoslavia as well as in Romania, Afghanistan, Pakistan, East Timor, Kenya (South Sudan) and Zimbabwe.  She has worked for the EC Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO), for UN Habitat, and as a consultant to WFP, FAO and several NGOs.  She provides needs assessments, strategy and operational policy development, identification, design, supervision and management of programmes and projects and evaluation of the results.  Her skills in negotiation and consensus building have been developed through training and practical experience in conflict situations and community work and she advocates and uses participatory approaches wherever appropriate.  Her Masters degree is in EU Law, Economics and Policies (specialising in Development Co-operation) and she has a first degree in Political Sciences.  Whilst her professional working language is English, her mother tongue Italian and she is fluent in French and Spanish.

Helen is our administrator and personal assistant to the managing director.  She brings a broad perspective having lived and worked internationally and having experience in a wide range of business sectors, from the financial sector, to light industry, to management consultancy, to small enterprise development.  This background equips her to contribute valuably to creative thinking on specific projects and in developing the company’s approach generally.  She also supports our events such as organisational awaydays, training days and community dialogue workshops.