Queen's University

University of Windsor

Senior Manager for Knowledge Sharing at Gatsby Africa

United Kingdom

Working in Gatsby Africa's Strategy & Learning team, my role involves building strategic relationships with implementers and the research community, as well as to support Gatsby in acting as an effective learning organisation.

Gatsby Africa

Senior Manager for Knowledge Sharing

For four years, I managed Pollen Group Consulting based out of Kampala, Uganda. Our team existed to promote and support efforts to improve aid effectiveness by focusing on addressing underlying systemic barriers to change in local markets and governance structures.

Pollen Group

Managing Director

I co-managed a small team of market development specialists working on market systems projects based in Africa. Our service was to provide embedded staff support in applying an M4P approach, including field staff and middle management coaching, as well as developing learning systems based on the DCED Standard.

Engineers Without Borders Canada

Program Manager

Our team worked directly with large development projects pursuing a market facilitation approach to interventions. Our service was to role model what strong market facilitation looks like to field staff and to test, iterate and learn from past interventions. Our staff were strategically placed throughout donor chains to be able to fully understand the systems in which we operated, to clearly articulate what we saw throughout, and to identify opportunities to have long-term sustainable impact for project beneficiaries. Our countries of focus were Ghana, Kenya and Uganda.

Market Development Strategist

Working on Engineers Without Borders' Political Advocacy team, I worked on a national campaign to improve transparency within Canada's aid sector. My role included coordinating a national day of outreach through our chapter system, establishing media contacts and drafting communications. After success with Canada signing on to the International Aid Transparency Initiative, I organized a political forum at our national conference which brought together MPs and a broad array of development experts and our organizations current and past field staff. I also co-planned and coordinated a 500 person march through the streets of Ottawa, handling both logistics and ensuring a media presence at the event.

Ryan Bourque