The Sector Debrief

"We are practising our way into what the future will look like."

In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad are joined by Vanessa Self, Project Director of the Impact Alliance, the collaboration between CARE, Mercy Corps, and Save the Children, created when three CEOs, Michelle Nunn, Tjada D'Oyen McKenna, and Janti Soeripto, came together aiming for deeper collaboration and efficiency.

Vanessa Self is honest...

"As educators, we need to start thinking about what we're educating people on."

In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad work through a question all three keep getting asked. What do you tell a student, an emerging leader, or a colleague who just lost their job, about a career in humanitarian and development work, when the old pathway into it no longer exists the way it used to?

The conversation moves betw...

In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad are joined by Sabrina M. Segal, Director of The Risk Collaborative, who has spent years working on how organisations in the humanitarian and development sector actually think about risk. Her argument: risk is not compliance. It is the effect of uncertainty on objectives, and most of the sector has been doing it backwards, starting from a list of everything that mi...

"This is not just a funding problem. It is a social contract problem."

A mother and two children spend their Sunday knocking on doors, collecting donations for an NGO. Ali's brain goes straight to overhead costs and financial flows. Then he stops. What he is actually watching is people practicing values, not talking about them. Showing their children what solidarity looks like. Asking strangers to be part of something bigger than th...

“This is not just a funding problem. It's a social contract problem." Kim Kucinskas came back from a month on the road and needed to think out loud. This episode is that conversation.By using Kim’s experiences at a curated gathering of bridge builders and network weavers in Buenos Aires, and the Skoll World Forum in Oxford as real examples, Ali Al Mokdad, Kim Kucinskas, and Thomas Jepson-Lay work through what it means t...

What does it mean to truly know who you are — and how you show up — in the spaces you occupy?In Episode 5 of The Sector Debrief, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad are joined by Aisha Tambajang, a humanitarian and development leader who has navigated identity, race, positionality, and belonging across The Gambia, Denmark, and the UK.The conversation moves between the deeply personal and the structurally...

In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad are joined bySofia Sprechmann Sineiro, a humanitarian leader who spent three decades inside the sector, from volunteering to becoming Secretary General of CARE International. One of the leading voices for locally led development and one of the leaders of the Pledge for Change, her journey took her across the globe, leading through some of the most challenging mome...

In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad explore what it means to lead in a humanitarian system under pressure. The conversation moves between personal reflection and system-level questions, touching on identity versus strategy, survival versus imagination, and the growing gap between grassroots innovation and large institutional responses.

Ali Al Mokdad reflects on a recent visit to Geneva and the disson...

In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad explore what the word sector actually means, responding to feedback from the first episode, and whether it still reflects the complexity of the work or the people inside it. The conversation moves into humanitarian diplomacy, rising leadership tension, and growing reputational pressure across the ecosystem. They reflect on systems breaking, new forms beginning to ...