Humanitarian + Sustainability Consulting.
Celebrate change, don’t suffer it.
The space between a problem and its solution is the territory of creation.
As delivering humanitarian and sustainaility results becomes more demanding, organisations need to become more agile. Understanding how we shape the future with today's decisions is key. Business transformation is hard and deeply personal but, not impossible.
Disruption and re-invention doesn’t have to be painful.
The future is not some place we go to - it is a place we build.
From ideation through planning and design. More than 15 years experience supporting organisations to lead through evolution,
Strategic foresight :
Understand the future to make better decisions today
I work wth organisations who need an extra hand to achieve meaningful change. From horizon scanning to ecosystem analysis to identify ‘white space’ opportuntieis for innovation and growth. Cutting edge strategic foresight tools to develop clear visions that match their ambitions.
Tell me morePeople centered program design:
Empower people out of shock and poverty through money not stuff
I accompany organisations that want to switch to a more efficient and dignified way of empowering vulnerable people. Cash transfers work to deliver humanitarian and sustainability objectives (not only financial inclusion). With more than 13 years experience in cash programming I’m an expert in quality design, reviews and evaluaitons.
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Paula Gil Baizan
Holistic, audiacious, prospective.
Paula Gil Baizan has a record of accurately predicting trends through an unwavering ability to research and define what’s new. Her forecasts promote innovation and unlock creative opportunties, blending visionary thinking with pragmatic direction. Paula works as an advisor offering specific solutions in regards to future visioning, change management and strategy development. She shares her knowledge during seminars and blogs. An intuitive thinker, Paula has worked for some of the world’s best known humanitarian organisations.
Just in! Check out my new podcast with Omidyar Networks
Current projects
A selection of some of my ongoing projects
Strategic foresight for market approaches in the nexus
Using the market to save lives and end poverty
Working with the CARE confederation to come up with a common vision for market based programming acrros its humantiarian and development work.
Can behavioural insights transform the humanitarian sector?
Behavioural economics meets cash transfer programming
The humanitarian sector hasn’t fully realised that through the increased use of technology and cash programming, the power to decide how assistance is used has shifted from traditional humanitarian agencies and donors to the actual beneficiaries of aid. This radically affects humanitarian’s ability to directly generate impact, so their role and approaches needs to change. Programs need to be designed around beneficiaries. We need to improve our understanding of how vulnerable people make decisions so we are able to identify ways to enable them to make the best possible choices.
A futures informed ecosystem analysis of humanitarian payments
Who, what, where
Conducting a thorough horizon scanning of the payments ecosystem on behalf of Red Rose.
A behaviourally informed approach to coordination
A new solution to an old problem
What if we could solve the complex problem of coordination by influencing the behaviour of those who participat ein it? I developed a behaviourally informed framework to incetivise positive coordination behaviours that stick.
Strategic foresight application: a playbook for cash and voucher programming
Applied strategic foresight
A fresh new way of looking at strategy. I designed and facilitated a process using strategic futures and foresight tools to develop a global playbook for the CARE Confederation.
Finding, aggregating and curating humanitarian disruption
Aggregating to increase coherence and use of innovation
I’m scoping a project for a humanitarian innovation aggregator. The plan is to work with ideas, products and people to broker collaboration to make aid smarter. The objective is to bring coherence to the humanitarian innovation ecosystem so great ideas evolve into prototypes. Products build on each other, share functionality and have an easy entry point to penetrate the market. We also aim to convene disruptive thinkers and enable them through tools and insight to lead change in a sustainable way.
SEMPO: Creating digital vulnerability profiles
A startup to deliver direct cash grants using online data for targeting
Been advising this platofrm that is reinventing disaster response. “We build technology to spend less resources (money, staff, time) finding vulnerable people, and more resources empowering them out of a crisis. Our platform empowers affected individuals to drive their own recovery from day one without having to wait for NGOs."
The strategic space for humanitarian ID
Approaching ID as a solution not a product
Humanitarians know we need to get much better at safeguarding the data we collect from the people we aim to serve. ID is a complex issue that challenges the foundations of a segmented sector reluctant to approach technology as anything but an asset for competition. To solve the problem of humanitarian ID, we would need to approach technology in a new way. But new ideas can only thrive in old structures if unique space is created for them to grow and blossom. What does that space look like for ID and who is truly able to provide it?
Let’s learn from each other
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Paula works through
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
Disrupt yourself before something else does.