PSSSSST … if you’re looking for my writer alter-ego, check out www.lauraebailey.org

Supporting Boards and Teams in Confronting Challenges and Embracing Change

I find great satisfaction in the work I’m doing with non-profits, both at the staff and board level. Whether their work is hyper-local (using education, outreach, and advocacy to fight for the health of a fragile bay ecosystem) or super-global (leveraging the power of an ex-head-of-state to empower a world-wide network of leaders to tackle wicked problems), accompanying these teams is so rewarding. They move through their own discomfort to identify what needs to be discarded in order to make way for change and growth. They reach across boundaries to build collective action; they grab hold of possibilities. THEY TAKE RISKS. Accompanying & supporting them expands my brain and my heart.

Facilitating Leadership in Fragile and Conflict- or Violence-Affected Settings

With colleagues Gary Milante and Mark Manashil, I’ve spent three years conceiving, designing, testing, and now delivering an immersive peacebuilding leadership simulation designed for flexible use across the diverse community of professionals who work in aspects of peace and conflict. This ‘game’, Carana:Adapt!, is a full-day immersive experience that builds adaptive leadership awareness through a difficult matrix game simulation of a fictional country (Carana ) in crisis. Participants take on roles of key national and international actors navigating development, humanitarian and peacebuilding challenges together. This will be the focus of much of my energy in 2025 — email me at [email protected] for more information!

Digital Access Isn’t a Luxury Good …

For years I got into arguments with my economist colleagues about our collective habit of treating digital access as a luxury good (something only middle- and upper-income countries and households ‘needed’), or as an investment option worthwhile primarily through its impact on entrepreneurs or businesses. My experience in low-income countries, most particularly those plagued by fragility and conflict, told me that digital access should be treated like a utility … potable water, or phone access: a foundational enabler of well-being and welfare. I wasn’t arguing that digital access should necessarily be free, but rather that income shouldn’t exclude households and individuals from the opportunities that digital access provides.

I didn’t get very far in these arguments … until Covid19 hit! The global pandemic laid bare the digital inequities across vertical (income) and horizontal (social, political, and identity) dimensions, while exposing the extent to which pre-pandemic approaches to bridging the digital divide have been dominated by economic considerations even while they are not universally treated as policy priorities. In 2021, I co-authored this policy brief with noted Kenyan scholar Nanjala Nyabola. We review key aspects of the digital divide, with special attention to exclusion and inequality. In our findings, we emphasize two things: poor connectivity isn’t just about wealth—it is also about inequality; and digital policy doesn’t just drive economic growth—it also enables rights and dignity.

On My Mind … how the stories we tell ourselves tie us up in knots 

In It Together: I’m thinking a lot about the ways we use identity and history to hold ourselves back instead of holding us together, narrowing our worldview to a single narrative. And that means I’ve gone back to my TedX talk from 2016!  It dates back to my three years living and working in Armenia, whose story of creativity and survival is complicated by identity and struggle – and, as we see in this current moment, heartbreaking. In it, I explore storytelling.  Stories are how we make sense of ourselves and our world, and also how we build our economies and our communities. I reflect on how easy it is to fall into the trap of the ‘single story’, over-simplifying and excluding people. What does it look like to make room for diverse perspectives, to build a shared economic story?

Thought Leadership on Development, Inequality, and Change in the Pandemic Era

On Love, Inequity, & Development Policy in the COVID Era

Conflict Prevention in the COVID Era: Why the USA Cannot Afford to Go It Alone

#BuildABridgeToBetter: Recommendations to Drive Pandemic Response

The Last Mile: Centering People in the Brave New World of Tech-Enabled Peace Operations

Gaming Peace: How to Get Four Million People Thinking About Recovering from Conflict

Most Form of Violence Can Be Halved by 2030:  Here’s How

Don’t Look Away: The Complex Story of Privilege Violence

Resources on Intersection of Climate-Disaster-Fragility-Conflict-Violence (coming soon)