Long before I became an engineer, I had a small workshop at home. Unfortunately, most of my tools and quite a few of my spare parts belonged to my parents. I remember my childhood even before I started school. Life in the 1970s was very different from the childhood many children experience today. For an
The Boy Who Couldn’t Buy Toys, So He Made Them Read More »
hange is easy to describe on paper. A new structure.A new strategy.A new team.A new way of working. But organizations are not pieces of paper. They are people, relationships, habits, histories, expectations, and sometimes very comfortable ways of doing things. Over more than three decades of humanitarian work, I have learned that leading change is
Leading Change: Knowing What to Keep, What to Change, and When to Move Read More »
After more than three decades working with the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement across Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, people sometimes ask me what leadership means. My answer has changed over the years. When I was younger, I thought leadership was about having the right answers. Today, I believe it is about
What 34 Years in Humanitarian Work Taught Me About Leadership Read More »
Every time I began a new humanitarian mission, I arrived with the same things: a contract, a job title, and years of experience.My organization had trusted me enough to send me. But trust with a new supervisor, team, National Society, partners, and communities could not travel with me from one mission to another.Experience may introduce
Trust: The Most Valuable Resource in Humanitarian Leadership Read More »
Humanitarian assignments are temporary. We arrive, receive a title, take responsibility for a team or an operation, work for a few months or a few years, and eventually, we leave. Someone else takes our office. Someone else receives our title. The organization continues. So, after more than three decades in humanitarian work, I have increasingly
Leadership Is Measured by What You Leave Behind Read More »
Diplomacy is often associated with ambassadors, foreign ministries, and negotiating tables. But I learned diplomacy somewhere very different. I learned it while working in conflict zones and disaster-affected communities, negotiating access at checkpoints, supporting humanitarian work in prisons and hospitals, engaging with government authorities and community leaders, and sometimes simply sitting over a cup of
Part 1: When Emergency Response Must Become Recovery Four months after Super Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines, I arrived in a country that was no longer in the first days of an emergency, but was nowhere near recovered. That distinction matters. The television images of November 2013 showed the immediate catastrophe: communities flattened, families searching
From Emergency Response to Long-Term Resilience Read More »
Integrity does not begin when we become managers or leaders. I believe it begins much earlier, in our families, in the values we learn from our parents, in religion, education, community, and the examples we see around us as children and young adults. For me, being known as an honest person was always a source
Integrity: Standing Your Ground When It Isn’t Popular Read More »
By now, the Red Cross office had officially upgraded from the middle-of-nowhere Astana to Gulbahar — a place that, unlike its predecessor, resembled an actual village. Gone were the days of living on the edge of a mountain like a hermit; now, we had real shops, a barber, a local café, and even a few grocery stores. Civilization at last! Life had changed drastically. I no longer
Mission Impossible: Panjshir Edition — Part 2 Read More »
And so, the next stroke of genius from the higher-ups landed squarely in my lap. “We need you in Panjshir Valley to rehabilitate hospitals there.” Lovely. Picture this: I was already knee-deep in the chaos of Sarpoza Prison, working under the suspicious glares of guards who would have loved to slap a “spy” label on me for simply
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