The Amplify Program.
A $15M innovation program inside the UK Government's Department for International Development, designed to make global aid distribution faster, more iterative, and more closely matched to the needs of aid recipients and last-mile providers on the ground in the developing world.
The UK Government's Department for International Development (DFID, now FCDO). We partnered with DFID's Innovation Hub directly, as well as various challenge co-sponsors which included UNHCR, UNICEF, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Amplify was the rare opportunity to design an ambitious program from the ground up, then build the team and launch the program. I served as Amplify's first director and ran a team of more than ten people for almost two years. In addition to leading the internal team, I led the client relationships with DFID's Innovation Hub, as well as an extensive list of additional stakeholders located in more than ten countries around the world.
Amplify ran eight innovation challenges over five years, focusing on topics that ranged from Urban Safety for Women to Early Child Development to Reproductive Health in Emergencies. In addition to distributing millions of dollars in aid and world class design support, the program demonstrated that slow moving and generally risk-averse government and international aid collaborators could in fact reimagine how international aid happens.
