Who We Are

Our expert team

Steering Committee

The steering committee sets strategic direction for the GPI Network,
including a broad Theory of Change to set out how the Network will help deliver GPI.

Chairs

Stephen Chacha

Africa Hub Director, Development Initiatives
Chair

Stephen is a development professional with more than fifteen years of experience in development programmes, human centered design, strategic planning, campaigning, government relations, research, conservation, data for development, data driven innovations, evidence-based decision making, policy formulation, and advocacy in Tanzania, Africa, and globally.

Stephen has played an active role as a strategist and expert in developing and shaping national, regional, and global development agendas, this includes the Africa Union Agenda 2063 (The Africa We Want), United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Sustainable Development Goals/ Global Goals), and Tanzania’s Five Years Development Plan III 2021/22 – 2025/26. He is a member of the National SDGs Coordination Framework, and the Development Partners Group on Innovation and Technology (DPG IT) in Tanzania.

He possesses excellent relationship building, stakeholders’ management and advocacy skills gained through years of work experience engaging with national governments, intergovernmental organizations (UN and AU), and international organizations in national, regional, and global development processes.

He is a seasoned and respected development expert who co-founded the Africa Regional Civil Society Engagement Mechanism (ARCSEM), Africa Working Group (AWG), Africa Philanthropic Foundation (APF), Tanzania Data Lab (dLab), Uwezo Tanzania, Tanzania Youth Vision Association, and the Youth of United Nations Association of Tanzania (YUNA-TZ).
He also sits in several global expert panels on UN reforms, Sustainable Development Goals, Finance for Development, Earth Observation, Data, and Innovation.

Stephen holds post-graduate degrees in business administration, and management of foreign relations.

Harpinder Collacott

Executive Director, Mercy Corps Europe
Vice Chair

Harpinder (Pin) Collacott is the Executive Director for Mercy Corps Europe. Prior to joining Mercy Corps in October 2022, she was Chief Executive of Development Initiatives. She is Chair of SOS Children’s Villages UK, Vice-Chair of UK umbrella body, BOND, and until October 2022 a Board Trustee of WaterAid UK. Harpinder has a diverse background in development and international affairs. At Development Initiatives she championed bringing data and evidence into the policy space and working with partners around the world to tackle poverty, inequality and build resilience. Over the last 25 years, she has held a variety of roles including the Political Advisor to the Prosecutor with the War Crimes Tribunal for Sierra Leone, Human Rights Programme Officer for the Oak Foundation, and South Asia Researcher for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Harpinder holds an undergraduate from Cambridge University and a postgraduate in international relations from London School of Economics.

Members

Solange Baptiste

Executive Director, International Treatment Preparedness Coalition

Solange Baptiste is Executive Director of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC). She leads community activists and allies across the globe to deliver ITPC’s mission to enable people in need to access optimal and affordable HIV treatment through treatment education, demand creation, community-based monitoring and interventions to make medicines more affordable. Solange has over 15 years of global program management and advocacy experience and specialises in monitoring and evaluation. She has a depth of knowledge in social epidemiology, health financing and community systems strengthening in the developing world through her work on USAID/PEPFAR health and development, bilateral and multi-county projects across Africa and Asia. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Tuskegee University and her Master of Science in Population and International Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Solange is committed to ensuring that the voice of affected communities contributes to and influences the decisions and policies that affect their lives.

Andrea Vignolo

Independent Consultant

Senior Consultant for International Development Cooperation and Associate Professor of the Academic Support Unit of the Secretary of International Relations of the University of the Republic. Coordinator and Teacher of Course of International Cooperation and Culture for Development in the Cultural School of CLAEH University. From March 2015 to February 2020 she was the Executive Director of the Uruguayan Agency of International Cooperation (AUCI) – Presidency of the Republic, Uruguay. From that post, she led the positioning of Uruguay as a country in transition to development with a dual role in International Cooperation with a focus on Human Rights and the 2030 Agenda. From AUCI, she guided the political-technical negotiation, which allowed the approval of the “Uruguay ́s International Cooperation Policy for Sustainable Development by 2030”.

Simon Reid-Henry

Research Professor, Peace Research Institute Oslo

Simon Reid-Henry is an academic and a key contributor to the conceptual development of Global Public Investment. Simon is a member of the EWG Steering Committee and is Academic Lead for the EWG’s technical papers. He has written widely on international affairs, development, and political economy, including the books The Cuban Cure: Reason and Resistance in Global Science and The Political Origins of Inequality: Why a more equal world is better for us all. Simon is a Fellow of the RSA and a recipient of the Leverhulme Prize. He received his PhD in Economic Geography from the University of Cambridge before moving to Queen Mary University of London where he is presently Professor of Historical and Political Geography and Director of the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences. He has held visiting positions at Columbia University in New York, at Macquarie University in Sydney, at the Norwegian Institute of Foreign Affairs and as Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Simon is also co-convenor of London Inequality Studies. His writing can be found in The Guardian, New Statesman, The Economist, The Times, The Independent on Sunday, and the London Review of Books. He has appeared on radio and television and has presented to government agencies in the UK and abroad. Recently he has contributed to the UK Labour task force on international development and is currently collaborating with the Joep Lange Institute on GPI.

Andrea Ordoñez

Director, Southern Voice

Andrea Ordóñez Llanos is Executive Director of Southern Voice, a network of over sixty think tanks from Africa, Latin America & the Caribbean, and Asia leveraging southern evidence and analysis to promote fair global development debates.

An economist by training, Andrea was previously Research Director at Grupo FARO, a think tank in Ecuador. Her main research interests are social policy, public finance, financing for development and international cooperation. Her aim is to ensure that new voices and ideas from the Global South are heard across regions. She is a member of FCDO’s International Development Expert Group and of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) and a board member of Publish What You Fund.

Mike Podmore

Director, STOPAIDS

Mike Podmore is an advocacy and network specialist that has been working in the field of HIV, health, gender and human rights for 20 years. Since 2015 he has been Director of STOPAIDS – an HIV, health and human rights advocacy network of 50 UK international development agencies working globally to end AIDS and realises all people’s right to health and wellbeing. Prior to STOPAIDS he was Policy Manager at the International HIV/AIDS Alliance and worked for 9 years at VSO on HIV, gender and education policy.

Jonathan Glennie

Co-Founder, Global Nation

Jonathan Glennie is a writer, campaigner and consultant on human rights, international cooperation, sustainable development and poverty. His work looks in particular at the changing nature of international cooperation as dominant paradigms and global economic relationships evolve. He has held senior positions in several international organisations, including Save the Children, Christian Aid and Ipsos. He has published two books on aid and cooperation (The trouble with aid: why less could mean more for Africa and Aid, growth and poverty with Andy Sumner) and helped set up The Guardian‘s Global Development website, for which he was a regular columnist. As a consultant, he has worked with governments, international agencies and civil society organisations as they renew their strategies for a new era. His book The Future of Aid: Global Public Investment, was published by Routledge in November 2020. He is currently co-founder of a think tank called Global Nation, along with Hassan Damluji, working on a new approach to international cooperation. He lives with his family in Colombia.