Tony Blair, Founder and Patron

The Rt Hon Tony Blair is the founder and Patron of the Africa Governance Initiative, and acts as a pro bono strategic advisor to AGI’s partner governments. For a more detailed biography of the former UK Prime Minister, see here.

Kate Gross, Founder of AGI and Senior Advisor to the Senior Management Team

Kate, a former Senior Civil Servant, founded AGI with Tony Blair in 2008. Kate advised Prime Minister Tony Blair and Prime Minister Gordon Brown as Private Secretary for Parliamentary and Home Affairs from 2004-2007, and has experience in a variety of UK government departments and the European Commission. Kate is a Fellow of the African Leadership Network and was selected as one of the 2011 “40 under 40” development leaders in the UK. Kate is currently on long term sick leave and we hope will return to work in autumn 2012.

Nick Thompson, Chief Executive

Nick is AGI’s CEO, he has been with AGI since the beginning and has played a number of senior roles across the organisation: he set up AGI’s programme in Sierra Leone in 2008 before returning to London to oversee all of the Africa programmes as Director of Projects from 2009-2011, during which time we launched our work in Liberia. In 2011 Nick became AGI’s first Chief Operating Officer and Deputy CEO. Before joining AGI, Nick worked in a variety of UK Government Departments and in Brussels advising Ministers on a range of policy areas including trade, energy and the environment.

Louise Harris, Chief Operating Officer

Louise joined AGI in December 2012 as Chief Operating Officer. After starting her career as a chartered accountant with PwC she went on to work at ICI and in the music industry, before making her move to the charity sector in 2009. Before joining AGI Lou was Director of Finance and Operations at ACEVO working to support and develop CEOs across the Charity Sector.

Paul Skidmore, Deputy CEO and Director of Projects and Performance

Paul became Director of Projects and Performance in September 2011 and was made Deputy CEO in April 2013. He first joined AGI in 2008, helping to establish AGI’s Rwanda programme before going on to lead the Sierra Leone project, returning to London as Director of Strategy and Fundraising in 2010. Before joining AGI, he worked as a strategy advisor and consultant to various UK government departments. Previous to this he was a senior researcher at the UK think tank Demos, and began his career as a speechwriter for David Lammy MP.

Andy Ratcliffe, Director of Strategy and Development

Andy joined the AGI London team in September 2010, after a stint as our Deputy Country Head  for AGI in Rwanda. After leading our Lessons Learned project for a year, he took over as Director of Strategy and Development in August 2011. He was previously a Senior Policy Adviser on Education in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit in London. Before that Andy worked for the University of Oxford on definitions and measures of poverty in the UK and in Africa (for more information and a list of publications see www.casasp.ox.ac.uk)

Read what Andy has been writing here. 

Shruti Mehrotra, Guinea Country Head

Shruti joined AGI in November 2011 to lead our newest project in Guinea. Previously, Shruti worked as Senior Campaigner at the NGO Global Witness and as an independent advisor focused on resource scarcity, sustainable development and political stability. Prior to that, Shruti served as Associate Director and Global Leadership Fellow at the World Economic Forum for five years, following several years in the field directing humanitarian and development programmes, in Afghanistan, the Palestinian Territories, Eastern Chad and Darfur for Oxfam GB and other international NGOs. Shruti started her career as a strategy consultant at the Monitor Group.

Katherine Randall, Rwanda Country Head

Katherine joined AGI in July 2012, from the position of Deputy Director at the Strategy Directorate in the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Before this, she worked at the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, under Prime Minister Gordon Brown, on issues of energy, health and social care. Katherine first worked in Africa in 2008 – as a monitoring and evaluation consultant for Save the Children in Côte d’Ivoire – while completing a Master in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Sebastien Frendo, Sierra Leone Country Head

Sebastien joined AGI in 2011 as a Blair-Elumelu Fellow with the Sierra Leone project, working on private sector development and energy. He became deputy country head later that year before taking over as country head in 2013. Before joining AGI Sebastien shared his time between developing his own social enterprise (ShARE) and working as a strategy consultant in Africa. Prior to that, Sebastien worked at the Boston Consulting Group in Paris. He holds a Masters Degree in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics and a Masters degree in Engineering from Telecom Paris and Shanghai Jiaotong. In addition to his Africa experience, Sebastien has spent 5 years studying and working in China and in India.

Rupert Simons, Liberia Country Head

Rupert became Liberia project head in February 2012 and is based at the Ministry of State for Presidential Affairs. He joined AGI from the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency, which he helped set up in 2011. Before that, Rupert was an engagement manager at McKinsey & Co, working on agriculture, climate change and public sector reform. He first worked in Liberia in 2007 at the Ministry of Agriculture, while completing a Master’s degree in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Nina Stochniol, Malawi Country Head

Nina joined the Malawi Project in April 2013 after two and a half years in AGI’s Rwanda Team, where she worked first as an Advisor to the CEO of the Rwanda Development Board, the government agency in charge of private investment, and later as an Advisor to the Ministry of Finance and Planning on its five year economic development strategy. Before joining AGI Nina was an Investment Officer at the International Finance Corporation, based in Nairobi but working across Africa on policy and investment in the health and education sectors. Nina holds an MPA in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School.