Barbara N. Kayondo

Barbara is an academic and researcher at Makerere University Business School (MUBS) in Uganda, where she lectures in the Department of Information Systems. She is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Cape Town, with her research focusing on enhancing compliance with Uganda's Data Protection and Privacy Regulations. Her academic interests span cybersecurity, data privacy, artificial intelligence, humanitarian work, and animal welfare.

Barbara is deeply committed to community development and advocacy. She leads Effective Altruism initiatives in Kampala and at MUBS, promoting impactful research and supporting both current and future generations. As a resident ambassador for future generations in Uganda, Barbara focuses on building futures literacy, strategic foresight, and long-term thinking among the youth, advocating for intergenerationally fair policies to improve governance and drive sustainable progress.

Her passion lies in creating an equitable and connected humanitarian ecosystem. A fervent advocate for ethical practices in technology and data management, Barbara dedicates her efforts to sharing and developing practical ideas that deliver long-term societal benefits. She envisions working alongside like-minded fellows to foster collaboration and innovation that contribute to a more just and informed world.

Fabio Bonacina

Fabio has more than twenty years of experience in international banking and insurance sectors.
He has significant experience in risk management, Compliance Conduct & Ethics (market conduct, codes of conduct, whistleblowing, bribery and corruption, customer centricity), Corporate Governance, Privacy & Data Protection and ESG.
He is a highly motivated and dedicated person in trying to make a substantial difference: he is committed to promoting resilience, particularly where economic development problems and environmental and social circumstances conflict with the need to move to a more sustainable economy.

Sanchita Shekhar

Sanchita Shekhar is a passionate advocate for peace and conflict resolution, with extensive experience across multiple continents. Her deep engagement with global and local issues is highlighted by her work with refugees, and prisoners of war, and participation in conflict-focused regions such as Israel, Palestine, and Korea. This rich background fuels her commitment to advancing education and social impact worldwide.

Sanchita has collaborated with academic institutions, NGOs, and independent organizations, driving forward impactful research and policy analysis. Her expertise lies in conducting in-depth research that addresses societal challenges, particularly at the intersection of human rights, policy analysis, and social impact.

Currently, as a Research Associate at Jan Swasthya Sahyog in India, she conducts field research in tribal regions, focusing on the dynamics between health systems and tribal communities. Her work involves comprehensive policy analysis and research that shapes healthcare policies and identifies social determinants for maternal and infant mortality in tribal regions.

Previously, Sanchita contributed to the Digital Economy Forum Think Tank in Nigeria, offering critical insights into digital policy, AI safety, and cybersecurity. Her work has been pivotal in managing research projects with global entities that interact with governance in Nigeria including the World Bank.

Osama Hafiz

With a Master's in Global Health focused on Conflict and Security, Osama is committed to redefining humanitarian discourse through the lens of the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus. His academic pursuits explore the interplay of the humanitarian and development nexus, particularly regarding primary healthcare in areas affected by conflict. As a Project Manager with a humanitarian organisation, Osama oversees medical outreach projects dedicated to bridging the gap in health service access for marginalised communities globally, firmly believing in integrated, person-centred services. Osama believes in the power of diplomacy, as he aims to leverage diplomatic approaches to dismantle silos between the humanitarian, development and peace domains. Joining IARAN, he commits to their strategic foresight and analysis mission in the humanitarian field, eager to develop innovative solutions for complex challenges

Miguel Castillo

Miguel Castillo is a Health professional with more than ten years of experience across a variety of settings, including conflict-affected areas, migration or protracted crises. Miguel has supported delivering health programming across the globe, including in South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Venezuela, Iraq, among others.

Specialized in implementing comprehensive health programs within humanitarian interventions, and deeply committed to exploring innovative digital health solutions in these challenging contexts, Miguel is continuously exploring transformative approaches to strengthen and fortify health systems, with an unwavering dedication to improving healthcare outcomes and adopting patient-centered approaches.

When outside of work, Miguel keeps busy with his energetic toddler daughter and challenging himself to be prepared to run a half-marathon.

Gianluca Ranzato

Gianluca is a development and humanitarian professional with more than 20 years of experience in the sector. After graduating in Agricultural Sciences, devoted himself to study Cultural Anthropology and Humanitarian Leadership. Gianluca has worked oversee for 12 years (Mozambique, South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Myanmar) with local civil society actors strengthening vision, strategy and networking.

Since 2014 he works for Save the Children Italy where he is now Humanitarian Strategist. His areas of specialization are People Surge Capacity, Preparedness and Anticipatory Action, Humanitarian/Development/Peace Nexus and Localization. More recently he has been focusing his studies and work on foresight based strategic thinking.

Gianluca is married to Cecilia and father of Eva and Elia and plays in a noise punk band.

Marta Persiani

Marta has about 15 years of experience working in the Development and Humanitarian sectors, mainly in Management, Quality and accountability, both in INGOs and in the UN. She is currently the Head of Programmes Management and Development in Save the Children Italy - supporting the organisation’s Localisation and Partnership focus - while consulting independently on M&E, Accountability to Affected Populations, Safeguarding and Prevention of Sexual Abuse and Exploitation.

She strives to continuously change observation points, as a means to inclusion, relevance and accountability, and to challenge (hers and others’) personal and professional assumptions towards growth and coherence. She does so by diversifying her professional careers (including, for instance, collaborating with Universities in Bologna - Italy and Reykjavik - Iceland), to nurture a wide while detailed vision.

Marta has decided to join IARAN as she views it as an opportunity for ongoing learning and exploration. She also believes that a stronger strategic sectoral reflection is essential for ethical, relevance, and efficiency reasons, and emphasizes the need for continued connections within the wider ecosystem beyond our sector.

Max Santana

Max Santana specialises in strategic foresight, drawing on his experience in intelligence and risk consulting. Prior to joining IARAN, Max held research positions at Control Risks and the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO), a public policy think tank in Mexico City.

Max also has teaching experience in strategic foresight. He has tailored strategic foresight courses for international relations students at Tec de Monterrey and shares his expertise in strategic planning with students on the Specialty for Tomorrow programme at CENTRO, a university specialising in creative industries in Mexico City.

Mahmoud Ramadan

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.

Alexandra Biem

Alexandra holds a master of science in applied public health. Over the course of her studies, she was able to develop skills in numerous fields such as project evaluation, data management, both qualitative and quantitative data analysis in the health sector.

During her final year internship, she worked on the construction of a french public health ecosystem. Nowadays, she’s project manager for an innovative health program designed by IARAN and set up by a network of NGOs to help cancer patients to fast recover after a treatment.

By joigning IARAN, she intends to keep gaining more skills on strategic foresight while collaborating and sharing experience with the other fellows.

Margherita Cittadino

Margherita is a multidisciplinary professional, vision facilitator and project manager in the field of social impact and of sustainability integration in the business.

She is part of a pool of expert technicians for Italy National Plan for Recovery and Resilience for the digitization, monitoring and performance of public institutions to increase administrative capabilities, digitize and simplify local management processes.

Margherita has almost twenty years of experience for the community growth, experienced in planning and management control in the Public Administration of the State Property and in Amnesty International Italy.

In addition, she leads strategy development and fundraising projects, workshop and educational training for small non-profit organizations, measurement and sustainability reporting for Foundation and NGO. Founder of a start-up company with a sustainable impact and benefit purpose, towards the circular economy.

She has Circular Re-Thinking training at Trentino Sviluppo e Terra Institute Rovereto Berlin, Masters in Management of Social Enterprises, Non Profit and Cooperatives at SDA Bocconi, Master's Degree in Engineering at UNINA Italy.

David Burt

David is a monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning specialist based in the UK, with a background in development, public health, and humanitarianism. He has experience of programme and project evaluation in Vietnam, the United States, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Central America and Madagascar; and currently works for the Start Network, a global network of humanitarian organisations. He is passionate about maximising the uptake of humanitarian collaborative learning and developing impactful learning models to ensure lessons from crisis response can improve future programming, as well as advocating for a more decentralised and equitable humanitarian system.

Hannah Bird

Hannah brings a very varied background to her research, having worked as a teacher in several countries, gained experience in public relations and lobbying, and practised as a lawyer. Throughout these diverse experiences, she has maintained her passion for humanitarianism through extensive volunteering, with a particular focus on refugees. She has led an English language teaching project and acted as a volunteer coordinator in Turkey, helped devise a lobbying strategy for a small NGO campaigning on immigration detention in the UK, and has done helpline and befriending roles.

She is currently preparing to embark on a further master's degree in economic development, and plans to continue her research on community organising techniques in the development and humanitarian sectors and how these techniques could be more widely applied. She has particular interests in urban development, urban migrant communities, and refugee and IDP camps. She is also interested in development generally in the Middle East and South Asia.

Hannah joined the IARAN because she shares its vision of an equitable and connected humanitarian ecosystem, and she wants to join the other fellows in sharing and developing practical ideas for achieving it.

Julia Broska

Julia is an humanitarian and development practitioner and works as an Advisor for GIZ Afghanistan (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), supporting internally displaced Afghans in their realization of their rights to shelter, basic services and livelihoods. Her main interests lie in maximizing the impact of aid by leveraging systems thinking approaches and moving the participatory revolution forward.

As a Governing Member of the International Association of Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection, Julia promotes collaboration, knowledge exchange and debate on a broad range of humanitarian topics and trends beyond organisational affiliations. 

Julia joined the IARAN fellowship because she wants to contribute to IARAN’s vision of an equitable and connected aid ecosystem. She wants to continue learning about, and sharing her knowledge of strategic foresight methodologies and approaches for the benefit of the people the humanitarian sector aims to assist. 

Juan Posada-Burbano

Juan Posada-Burbano is an international consultant in project management. Posada has more than 10 years of experience conducting needs assessments, writing grants, monitoring project implementation, and engaging with a wide range of stakeholders, from local organizations and communities, to governments and international cooperation agencies. Posada was formerly the National Protection and Humanitarian Assistance Coordinator for Save the Children in Colombia, and served in the European Commission Humanitarian Office for South America, overseeing projects on Protection and Humanitarian Assistance, Disaster Risk Reduction, and Education in Emergencies in Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela. Currently, he advices humanitarian NGOs in project implementation in Colombia, and oversees a research project in the Middle East, led by a US-based university consortium, to support and restore cultural and traditional livelihood practices among minority groups targeted by extremist violence. He also conducts his own independent research on the role of civil society organizations as development agents, locally-led capacity development, and knowledge co-production in humanitarian-development settings.

Sali Hafez

Sali is a global health researcher and specialist, with 10 years expertise in health and gender in humanitarian settings and fragile states. In her previous capacity, as the humanitarian affairs officer at United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), she led field level and multi-country research, humanitarian analysis and scenario development. Currently, she is a doctoral candidate at the University of Geneva, school of global health, working to promote evidence based health policy and decision making.

Luana Moussallem

Medical doctor in Brazil for 20 years, Luana is experienced in multidisciplinary teams coordination, risk management processes, continuous education and health and nutritional fields projects. Also interested in and involved with political and community related issues and grassroots movements. In Europe since 2018, Luana engaged in a new journey oriented towards humanitarian and cooperative initiatives on a global and local level, related to public health, nutrition, food security and education. For Luana the IARAN is a space of collaborative intelligence among humanitarians sharing a common vision on the transformations to come; it is a space of hope, trust and intelligence where to boost innovative projects for local leadership, multicultural cooperation and strategic thinking: "Research and collaborative networks are very important tools to construct and make happen a more developed, connected, respectful and free world".

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.