Policy Engagement

Below I identify some of my efforts to cross traditional academic-policy boundaries as well as the media coverage these efforts have attracted.

Banking Bad — Coverage in the Economist. Research articles in AJPS and Nature Human Behaviour. Evaluations on illicit financial flows with the Central Bank of the Bahamas and the Inter-American Development Bank.

Global Shell Games — Book, policy report, Monkey Cage. Covered widely including TED, NPR Planet Money (1, 2), the Economist (1, 2, 3), the New York Times, and UK Channel 4, among many others.

Policy work includes collaborations or contracts with UN FACTI and World Bank StAR. Based on a 60 Minutes report, our research motivated an investigation by Global Witness, which catalyzed further support for bipartisan legislation in the U.S., which was signed into law. The research motivated and supported efforts for reform in many other countries, including the UK and British Virgin Islands.

I am co-founder and president of Evaluasi, a startup focused on improving social impact work and evaluation. I have carried out scores of impact evaluations across more than two dozen countries. Details and reports available on request.

I co-authored a retrospective on USAID DRG's use of impact evaluation (full report, 2-pager).

I pioneered a new approach to bridge academic work with the public and private sector. See the report from our hackathon on the peace process in Colombia.

I initiated and continue to work on mapping critical political and economic phenomena. Geocoding approaches include the Open Aid Partnership, International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), AidData, World Bank, African Development Bank, and Malawi Government/CCAPS. As part of this, AidData was awarded a $25 million grant from USAID to broaden and deepen the impact of mapping in development.

Impact Evaluation of the UN Peacebuilding Fund's Operations in Burundi. Technology and Peacebuilding Learning and Evaluation White Paper (Build Peace 2014 Conference).

Behavioural Insights Team, Wolfsberg Group, U.K. DFID (now FCDO), U.K. Ministry of Defence, U.S. State Department, USAID Geo-center, USAID Office of Transition Initiatives, Global Financial Integrity, United Nations Peacebuilding Fund, UNDP, World Bank, South by Southwest Eco, and Development Gateway Aid Management Meetings in Nairobi and Dakar, among others.