Mahmoud is a strategic planning and design processes facilitator with expertise in collaborative leadership development, building social energy and community mobilization. Mahmoud currently lives in Brussels and manages his consultancy PLAYMAKER, which develops common spaces about re-development, peace building and community capital with/without geography. He is also co-founder of Syria Initiative (part of Common Space Initiative) in Beirut that aims to empower local peace builder networks.
Marie-Agnès Tur
Marie-Agnès is a humanitarian practitioner, who has been working in different post-crisis contexts, mainly as field coordinator, in charge, amongst others, of strategy development (exit strategies and long-term ones) and network facilitation. After having worked for 3 years in ex-Yugoslavia, dealing with peace-building and peace prevention issues, she decides to strengthen her theoretical background and take time to think about her experience to improve her field skills. She studies the "sociology of conflicts" and works as a researcher at the Peace Research Center of the Catholic University of Paris for 2 years. She is convinced that the research and humanitarian fields should work more closely together.
She therefore decides to go back to the field and continues ensuring that research is taken into account and used in the projects over the years she spends abroad. Back to Paris, she works as a Desk Officer, and then Director of Operations at the French Red Cross. She was then asked to facilitate the participatory development of the 10 years strategy of the international action of this organization. She identifies useful resources at the IARAN and develops her skills and the ones of her organization in prospective strategy. She is still supporting the work in this field.
Her research topics and work are focusing on enhancing the capacity and the role of national organisations in their country and towards international actors based on her long-term experience with the 2 largest international networks (Caritas and the Red Cross). She is also very much involved in change management and social impact evaluation. She has published a book on evaluating the impact of a peace-building projects.
Smruti Patel
Smruti Patel is a humanitarian and development professional with expertise in facilitating conversations on safeguarding, accountability, localisation and collaborative partnerships. She is passionate about accountability to affected populations and promoting local leadership and is interested in using new more strategic and holistic approaches to ensure more of local voices are heard and influence policy decisions. She is a qualified coach using Human Potential methodology to accompany local leaders, teams and organisations to reflect on deeper attitudes and behaviours to lead to being at full potential. In 2014, she founded the Global Mentoring Initiative (GMI) based in Geneva. It works in collaboration with partners to promote holistic and equitable partnership approaches. She is one of the founder member of the International Convenor Committee of Alliance for Empowering Partnership (A4EP). She joined the IARAN fellowship because she would like to work with others to lead courageous conversations to bring change in the aid architecture to ensure equitable partnerships and sector fit for the future.
Miguel Leroy
Miguel is local development and public affairs expert. Member of the staff of the Senate in France for many years, he is himself today a local elected representative from regional institutions (Mayor and President of a community of communes). Miguel worked as director of development in the waste, recycling and energy sector. Particularly interested to the involvement of local actors in the humanitarian aid decision making, Miguel has decided to join the IARAN because he is passionate about collaborative design, he believes in the strength of collective intelligence and because of his strong desire to contribute to the raise of a new aid paradigm.
Marie-Rose Romain Murphy
Marie-Rose is the Founder of ESPWA, Inc. (Economic Stimulus Projects for Work and Action-acronym means hope in Haitian Creole), a transnational organization and a Haitian leadership network. She’s the Co-Founder of the Haiti Community Foundation (Haiti’s first community foundation). She’s also the Founder and President of RMC, a management and strategy consulting firm. A multilingual professional with US and international experience, she has over 25 years of experience and a strong track record in community development, humanitarian projects and initiatives, philanthropy, marketing, executive leadership, social entrepreneurship and consulting. Her core interest is the creation of viable and sustainable pathways of development for low-income individuals, marginalized communities and developing countries. Over the course of her career, Marie-Rose has worked as a project manager, an executive director, a deputy director and a consultant for local, regional, national and international organizations.
Koenraad Van Brabant
Koenraad for the past three decades has been working mostly in and on conflicts, as a humanitarian actor and peacebuilder. Thematic areas of expertise are conflict- and peace analysis, working with conflict-sensitivity, participatory action approaches and peacebuilding. He likes to zoom in and out, seeing the bigger picture but also the relevant detail, and promotes reflective practices as part of the tactical and strategic navigation of complex and volatile environments. He also works on collaborative approaches, from individual interpersonal skills, to healthy teams, partnerships between organisations and more complex multi-stakeholder processes. He is an experienced facilitator and accredited partnership broker.
Michel Maietta
Michel is a strategic foresight professional, with expertise in strategy and organisational design and two decades of experience in the humanitarian and development sector. Former Director of Strategy at Save the Children International and Action Against Hunger, Michel founded and facilitates the Interagency Research and Analysis Network.
In addition to his work for aid organisations, Michel has been designing ad hoc training courses for humanitarian and development leaders for over a decade, teaching at Science Po, Deakin, Federico II Universities and in the Futuribles and IRIS Think Tanks, and training the humanitarian workers of tomorrow. When Michel is not conducting bespoke pieces of foresight work, he leads strategic and transformational projects.
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