Expert Team: Transition Assistance Practice Group

Rachel Ziemba is a geo-economic and country risk expert. She runs Ziemba Insights, an advisory firm supports clients in their macroeconomic scenario analysis and policy due diligence. She tracks how governments use their balance sheets to meet economic and political goals and the ways resource wealth is managed. This includes sanctions, export controls as well as sovereign investment and industrial policy. 

A broad expert in energy policy, Rachel writes regularly about dynamics across the fossil fuel industry, renewable energy and the development of critical mineral supply chains. She is an expert in how sanctions reshape energy markets and the macro economy of target and sending nations, including the unintended consequences on development. 

She is also Senior Advisor, Sanctions at Horizon Engage,  Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and a non-resident fellow at the Gulf International Forum. She teaches International Political Economy at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. As part of her commitment to supporting the next generation she serves on the advisory board of the Harriman Foreign Service Fellows, which supports state department interns. 

Before founding Ziemba Insights, Rachel served as the head of emerging markets research at Roubini Global Economics, a global macro strategy and country risk firm. In that capacity she co-led the research team, oversaw the emerging market and commodity research including, the firm’s quarterly global economic outlook and scenario production and implementing many of its customized research projects and due diligence exercises for private equity firms.

Rachel regularly serves as an expert commentator in key media outlets including CNBC, Bloomberg, New York Times, Financial Times, and her research has been cited by a range of international institutions including the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and European Central Bank as well as many Academic Institutions.  She is the co-author of “Scenarios for Risk Management and Global Investment Strategies”  and “Investing in the Modern Age” both with Professor William Ziemba, her late father.

Rachel started her career in international development, working for the Canadian International Development Agency in Egypt, and the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa on development economic issues. She was also a US State Department intern at the Embassy in Paris and the US Consulate in Toronto.

She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago with honors, and a Master of Philosophy degree in international relations with a specialization in international political economy from St. Antony’s College, Oxford University (with distinction). She holds the Sustainability and Climate Risk certificate from GARP.

Prof. Andrew Boraine is an independent partnering and systems change practitioner with over five decades of experience working in South Africa’s political, local government, urban, economic, and sustainability transformations.

Andrew established and led three collaborative intermediary organisations: the South African Cities Network (SACN), the Cape Town Partnership (CTP), and the Western Cape Economic Development Partnership (EDP).

Andrew has hands-on experience with over 100 multi-stakeholder partnering processes, covering a wide range of issues and sectors, such as water, waste, energy, just transition, mobility and transport, inclusionary housing, food and nutrition, public safety and violence reduction, agriculture and rural development, local economic development, youth employment, homelessness, urban management and place-making, tourism, open data, wetlands conservation, and collective memory work.

Andrew advises a diverse spectrum of local and international partners in government, civil society, community organisations, business, and research and knowledge institutions on how to achieve collaborative impact. Andrew is an adjunct professor at the University of Cape Town’s African Centre for Cities (ACC) and a research fellow at Stellenbosch University’s Centre for Sustainability Transitions (CST).

Andrew was previously Deputy Director General (Local Government) in the Department of Constitutional Development in the mid-1990s. In this capacity, he assisted with the drafting of the local government chapter in the SA Constitution and initiated the first Local Government White Paper process in 1997. Andrew was City Manager of Cape Town from 1997 to 2001.

Martin completed his PhD at the Clinton Institute (University College Dublin), where his research focused on the role of the Irish diaspora in the Northern Ireland Peace Process examining areas such as diaspora media, diaspora philanthropy, and diaspora politics. He is the founder of Global Diaspora Insights (GDI). 

GDI provides advisory, research, policy, and training services on diaspora engagement through its in-house expertise and network of global experts. In collaboration with partners, GDI has contributed to diaspora engagement in over 50 countries for a variety of public, private, and third sector clients. 

Martin currently sits on the Advisory Board of Ireland Reaching Out, which is a volunteer-based, non-profit initiative that connects people of Irish heritage with their place of origin in Ireland and he is an advisor at The Networking Institute. Previously, he was a visiting fellow at the United Nations University in Maastricht (UNU-MERIT) and served a full-term on the Executive Advisory Council of the African Diaspora Network based in Silicon Valley.

Martin has a strong and varied publication record on diaspora engagement including work supported by several governments as well as the African Development Bank Group, African Union, European Union, United Nations, and others. His most recent academic publication was ‘Diaspora Philanthropy: Unlocking New Portals for Diplomacy and Development’ in the first edition of the Routledge International Handbook of Diaspora Diplomacy. He has also participated in or co-chaired organising committees for several flagship global convenings on diaspora engagement including the inaugural Global Diaspora Summit co-hosted by the Government of Ireland and U.N. Agency for Migration in 2022.

Professor Gibril Faal is a multi-disciplinary business and development executive. He is the co-founder and director of GK Partners, which specialises in socially responsible business models, sustainable development and programme implementation. He is also a visiting professor in practice at the London School of Economics (LSE) and at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa (FLIA); a council member of Carnegie African Diaspora Program; a board member of Giving Tuesday Philanthropy and the African Research Excellence Fund (AREF); and Lead Consultant to the African Union Commission on innovative, development and diaspora finance.

In the early 2000s, Professor Faal was part of the small team of experts that worked on a Department of Trade and Industry project to develop the UK’s social enterprise business support, legal and financing structures. In 2003, he founded RemitAid™ as a mechanism to transform remittances into a sustainable form of development finance. In 2017, he initiated the Migration and Sustainable Development in The Gambia project (MSDG) in partnership with the governments of Switzerland and The Gambia.

Professor Faal has previously served as vice chair of Bond, the network of UK NGOs working on international development; chairman of AFFORD-UK, the pioneering diaspora-development charity; founding director of the Africa-Europe Diaspora Development Platform (ADEPT); and as a magistrate in Her Majesty’s Court and Tribunal Service. He has worked as a technical expert with the United Nations, World Bank, European Union, University of Oxford, and many development institutions and governments across the world. In 2017, he served as overarching expert for the Global Compact for Migration (GCM), and has addressed the UN General Assembly several times. In the past 25 years, he has been appointed to various strategic, development and management boards and panels across the world. In the UK, he has been appointed to several public function roles by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary of State for International Development, Home Secretary, and the Lord Chancellor. In 2014, Professor Faal was appointed an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to international development.

Adrian Magendzo is an entrepreneur and Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Kentucky. As an independent international consultant in innovation and entrepreneurship policy, he has worked with various institutions including the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank. With IFIT, he has contributed to the Institute’s work on strengthening entrepreneurial ecosystems in The Gambia and Uzbekistan.

Prior to these roles, Adrian served as an economic attaché to the Chilean embassy in Washington, D.C., and as director and professor of the Master in Innovation and Entrepreneurship programme at the Universidad Adolfo Ibanez in Santiago, Chile. He was previously Executive Director of the High Impact Entrepreneurship Policy division at Innova-Corfo, the Chilean government’s innovation and entrepreneurship promotion agency. As an entrepreneur, Adrian has founded several companies in the technology, manufacturing, and food industries.

Adrian has a Master’s of Science in Industrial Engineering from the University of Chile and a Master’s in Technology Commercialisation and Innovation from the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin. 

Rachel Scott is Senior Principal of Cabal Group. She focuses on crises and fragile contexts, specialising in financing, donor policy, multilateral business models and ways of working, and humanitarian policy, trends and practice. Rachel brings some 30 years of experience leading multi-cultural teams in international organisations, building partnerships and alliances, analysing and negotiating policy, and designing innovative programs, including over 10 years of experience on the ground in crises in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. She is passionate about supporting organisations to deliver better results and build trust in today’s challenging, resource-constrained environment.

Rachel has held a number of senior international positions. As Head of the OECD’s work on Crises and Fragility, she led support to the International Network on Conflict and Fragility (INCAF) donor group, and engaged donors, development banks, United Nations organisations, and civil society in setting standards for aid to crises and fragile contexts. This included dedicated work to modernise financing for crises, support peacekeeping transitions, and improve donor policy on humanitarian aid. She also led assessments to determine if United Nations organisations like IOM, UNHCR and WFP are fit for purpose for the crises of today and tomorrow.

Previously, Rachel worked for the United Nations and NGOs, delivering innovative emergency programming for UNICEF, leading field coordination for OCHA in three countries, coordinating cross-UN recovery planning following the Beirut Port Blast, providing expertise to UN leaders on financing in crisis settings, leading UNDP’s repositioning in crisis contexts, and as a senior leader for NGOs delivering programmes in disasters and complex emergency settings.

Rachel, a dual French and New Zealand national, received a Master of International Relations from Victoria University, and a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Canterbury. She works in both English and French.

Ambassador Yakobashvili is founder and president of the TY Strategies LLC, a boutique consulting firm specializing in advising governments, non-governmental institutions and business communities in the U.S., Europe and Eurasia. Prior to that, he served as an Executive Vice President of PASS LLC, a global social impact consultancy firm. In 2014, he founded and led the Washington, DC-based New International Leadership Institute, a not-for profit organization dedicated to reforms, good governance and anti-corruption. Prior to that, he held the position of Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. From early February 2011 to March 2013, he served as Ambassador of Georgia to the United States. Prior to his posting, he was Deputy Prime Minister and State Minister for Reintegration in the Government of Georgia.

Ambassador Yakobashvili is a career diplomat who joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia in 1991. He holds the diplomatic rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary granted by the President of Georgia.

He is a graduate of the Department of Physics from the Tbilisi State University. In 1998 he was trained in mid-career Diplomatic Courses at the Centre of Political and Diplomatic Studies at Oxford University. He is a Yale World Fellow (2002) and participated in the Executive Security Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (2004). In 2006, he was a visiting researcher at the Silk Road Study Centre of Uppsala University, Sweden.

Ambassador Yakobashvili co-founded and has served as an Executive Vice-President of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GFSIS), a leading think tank in the Caucasus region. He also co-founded the Atlantic Council of Georgia, as well as the Council of Foreign Relations of Georgia. He frequently contributes to international printed and digital media on issues of regional security and transformation.

In February 2012, Ambassador Yakobashvili was decorated with Presidential Medal of Excellence. He speaks Georgian, English, Russian and Hebrew.

Zuhra Halimova is senior analyst at the Digital Ecosystem Country Assessment (DECA), part of the USAID US Support for Economic Growth in Asia (US-SEGA) project. She also conducts research on the digital transformation of the Central Asia region, working with the EU, World Bank, USAID, GIZ and Internews/RDR. Zuhra is strategic advisor to Women in Digital Transformation.

Previously, Zuhra was a visiting scholar at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. In this capacity she conducted critical analytical discussions with stakeholders, which she developed into a book manuscript, Reassessing Foreign Aid in Eurasia: Donors’ Agendas and Local Perceptions. 

For more than 20 years, she was the executive director of the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. In this role, she worked closely with governmental and non-governmental stakeholders and international organisations, in addition to independent media and business.

Zuhra holds a master’s degree in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She also has a master’s in oriental studies from Tajik State National University. Zuhra previously completed the US-South Asia Leader Engagement Program, “Terrorism as Threat to Global Security”, part of Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Executive Education Program. She has also completed the Global Leaders Executive Education Program at INSEAD-OSF.

Timothy Nielander works on a wide range of public-private cooperation projects focused on improving collaboration and systems for facilitating development assistance and innovative approaches to funding and addressing global challenges.

He is a co-founder of GP3 Institute Foundation Netherlands and Switzerland – which hosts a network of experts that help design and implement programs with multinational and private participants based in Europe, the Middle East, Caribbean/Central America, Southeast Asia, Africa and the South Pacific across a range of issues: disaster planning and response, health, education, agriculture, financial inclusion, clean energy, sports-development, safety/security. He has lived and worked in Jordan, Belgium, and Switzerland and travels frequently to Africa, Pacific Asia and Europe to work in-country. Tim is a qualified solicitor in England/Wales and licensed to practice law in Washington, USA. He holds an LLM in Intellectual Property Law and a PhD from the University in Geneva.

He recently published “Public–Private Partnerships in Global Development” (Edward Elgar, 2020) for which a companion university course has been developed for universities serving as magnets for students of international cooperation.