ID Geeks Podcast
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Ep 8: Systems Change Impact and the Power of People - with Doreen Ndishabandi

Doreen Ndishabandi is the Chief of Staff and Director of Government Relations for One Acre Fund, Rwanda. One Acre Fund supplies smallholders farmers with the financing, training, and market support they need to increase their yields and generate a gain in farm income. Globally, One Acre Fund employs more than 8,500 staff who serve more than 1.3 million farm families each year, with an additional 1 million households reached through private and public partnerships. In her first four years at One Acre Fund, Doreen oversaw One Acre Fund’s country-scale engagements and partnerships with the Government of Rwanda, as well the program’s policy & partnerships, communications, and legal and compliance portfolios.

For the last two years she has focused on two areas of organisational strategy: systems change impact and People. One Acre Fund’s systems change strategy aims to transform agricultural systems by leveraging the enormous existing potential and years of close partnerships with governments and private actors to address current market failures, advocate for farmer-centered policy change by elevating direct farmer voice, replicate systems-focused interventions that are backed by real evidence, and ensure a more gender-equitable agricultural system. Doreen is also overseeing the Rwanda program’s increased investments in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, which in the past year has seen an overhaul of our leadership structures as well as equity-driven changes to our performance management and compensation and benefit systems.

Doreen is a 2018 Skoll Foundation and Mastercard Foundation Emerging Leaders Fellow and an Opportunity Collaboration Global Skoll Foundation Fellow. Prior to joining One Acre Fund, Doreen worked on Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) in Belize and has previously worked with the World Justice Project, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Rwanda, and Youth Action Africa. Doreen attended Tufts University and has a B.A in International Relations.

Ep 7: Revolutionizing the Knowledge Economy - with Arun Shanmuganathan

Arun is a Kiwi-Indian entrepreneur living in Kigali, Rwanda. He co-founded Hence, a tech startup that is helping to create a fair, efficient and transformative knowledge economy for people everywhere, initially by bringing data to the way companies work with their lawyers. Arun also helped set up the Rwandan Mathematics Olympiad Program, working with the top mathematical problem solvers from across Rwandan high schools. He believes that talent is universal but opportunity is not, and is striving to fix that. He loves learning about and discussing mathematics, education, technology, data, talent and much more!

Ep 6: Responsible investment and Development Policy- with Sarah Brewin

Sarah is a lawyer who advises developing country governments on laws, policies, contracts and treaties relating to responsible investment, particularly in agriculture. Sarah is based in Rwanda where she worked for two years as a legal advisor to the Rwandan Ministry of Trade and Industry providing legal and policy advice on investment, competition, trade, industrial policy, intellectual property, and other areas of economic law. Sarah has also worked as an embedded legal advisor to the Samoan Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Labour. She now works for a think tank called the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

Ep 5: Market Based Approaches to Development- with Emily Karol and Chris Nicoletti

Emily Karol's passion for storytelling is woven through her life and career. With a degree in Photojournalism from the University of Georgia and an aptitude for learning and taking on new challenges, the breadth of Emily's communications career has reached into advocacy and grassroots activism, journalism, public relations, documentary film, and, now, digital marketing and communications. In 2016, Emily joined iDE as the Digital Media Manager, an international nonprofit that's working to end poverty through the power of markets in 11 developing countries. It's through this work that she marries her storytelling DNA with the technical skills and execution needed to amplify iDE's impact to donors, supporters, and partners. With iDE, she has traveled to rural communities in Nepal, Honduras, and Ethiopia to capture the stories of farmers who have moved from subsistence to surplus and families who are navigating their way out of poverty. It's in these stories that she's truly living out her passion.

Chris Nicoletti leads iDE’s global evidence and analytics efforts, including rigorous impact evaluations and designing and implementing dynamic custom-built ICT solutions across the portfolio of iDE’s interventions to overcome operational challenges and catalyze existing business models and market facilitation programs – spanning agriculture, WASH, women’s empowerment, nutrition, food security and climate-change adaptation and resilience programs. Chris has extensive experience carrying out both randomized and quasi-experimental impact evaluations, as well as model-based impact estimation, working on USAID, DFAT, World Bank, GAC, Sida, SDC, NZAid, Stone Family Foundation, World Bank, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and MCC-funded programs in Central America, Africa, and Asia – among others. He received his BS in 2008 in Economics and Psychology from Linfield College, McMinnville, Oregon and in 2011 he completed his MS in Agricultural and Resource Economics from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. He enjoys skiing, climbing, cycling and traveling, while residing in Boulder, Colorado.

Ep 4: The Forgotten Killers in the Time of COVID - with Roy Joseph

Roy Joseph has a degree in Economics from University of Delhi and worked in Management Consulting in New Delhi. Roy moved to Rwanda to work with Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) on Tuberculosis and has worked closely with governments in East and West Africa to scale up Tuberculosis access programs. He has also helped design and implement health programs in Malawi, Kenya and India; incorporating new digital technologies to aid in finding people with Tuberculosis. Roy is pursuing a Master's degree inPublic Policy with a focus on International Development at Harvard Kennedy School.

Find Roy on Instagram @royjoseph18
Learn more about the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) at their website: clintonhealthaccess.org

Ep 3: Off-Grid Solar and Public-Private Sector Interventions - with Dr. Iwona Bisaga

Iwona is a Research Associate at Loughborough University on the Modern Energy Cooking Services Programme where she leads research on humanitarian energy access. Prior to that, she was a Research Associate at University College London where she worked on resilient recovery of displaced communities in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. She also worked with Chatham House- a UK international affairs think tank, where she led on the harmonisation of humanitarian energy access indicators. Iwona completed her PhD at University College London on energy access through decentralised solutions with a focus on off-grid solar energy in Rwanda. She then went on to head the research department at Bboxx- a provider of off-grid energy systems in Sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia. Having worked at NGOs in Madagascar and Ecuador, and at Engineers without Borders UK where she managed energy access and water, sanitation and hygiene programmes globally, she has a diverse experience cutting across non-profit, private and policy sectors, and academia.

Ep 2: Drones Delivering Blood and African Youth Empowerment - with Israel Bimpe

Israel is Director of Africa Sales and Customer Success at Zipline. Israel previously led Zipline’s global partnerships with multilateral organizations and UN agencies, and prior to that he led global engagement on integrating public and private medical product supply chains, and also led Zipline’s engagement with the government of Rwanda, including integration in the healthcare system, and regulatory compliance and reform to integrate the national airspace.

David Spielman and friend, Nigeria 17.JP

Ep 1: Farmer Rights, GMOs, and Agricultural Policy - with Dr. David Spielman

David Spielman is a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. He joined IFPRI in 2004 and is currently based in Kigali, Rwanda, where he leads the Rwanda Strategy Support Program. David’s research agenda covers a range of topics including agriculture and rural development policy; agricultural science, technology, and innovation; plant genetic resources and seed systems; agricultural extension and advisory services; and community-driven rural development. From 2010 to 2020, David was based in Washington, DC, where he led IFPRI’s research theme on science, technology, and innovation policy. From 2004 to 2010, he was based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he contributed to IFPRI’s work on strengthening agricultural innovation systems. Earlier in his career, he worked on agriculture and rural development issues for the World Bank (Washington, DC), the Aga Khan Development Network (Pakistan), and several other organizations. David received a PhD in Economics from American University in 2003, an MSc in Development Studies from the London School of Economics in 1993, and a BA in International Relations from Tufts University in 1992.

ID Geeks Podcast Also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify