Jite Phido is a development and innovation leader with over sixteen years of experience working across systems change, inclusive development, social and behavior change, and innovation ecosystems. Her work focuses on strengthening the systems, institutions and partnerships that enable more equitable and effective responses to complex development challenges, with particular expertise in participatory approaches, equity and inclusion, and ecosystem strengthening.
At Results for Development, Jite Phido is an associate director within the scaling innovations practice, where she leads the team’s ecosystem strengthening portfolio, which includes building institutional and individual capacity, and developing approaches that enable more inclusive participation, learning and more effective uptake and scaling of innovations. She additionally manages the International Development Innovation Alliance (IDIA) Regenerative Livelihoods thematic area, the IDIA Academy, as well as the IDIA’s global innovation advisors program, a network of technical experts, thought-leaders, entrepreneurs and system disruptors from low- and middle-income countries who share IDIA’s priorities and objectives, and use their expertise and experience to improve IDIA’s work.
Throughout her career, Jite has focused on participatory approaches to development that leverage community participation and inclusion. She has worked across a range of sectors, including health, education, gender, climate change adaptation, sustainable and inclusive livelihoods, community-led approaches to tackling modern-day slavery, violent extremism, conflict prevention and peacebuilding. Across these areas, has worked with governments, communities, civil society, funders and international development organizations to design and implement participatory approaches to complex social challenges.
Prior to joining R4D, Jite was an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity at the London School of Economics’ International Inequalities Institute, where she focused on gender equity and the ways marginalized communities make claims and challenge power. She previously served as Program Director at ARDA Development Communication Inc., a development communication organization based in Lagos, Nigeria, where she led multidisciplinary programs using media, technology and participatory approaches to address inequality and improve access to information, services and networks. Her work included radio, video, participatory theatre, distance learning, interactive voice response and mobile applications, with media interventions reaching more than 25 million Nigerians across six languages.
Jite has also worked at the intersection of research, policy and government. As a Bridge Fellow with the Nigeria Economic Summit Group, she was seconded to the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, supporting the mainstreaming of gender equity and social inclusion across health, education, livelihoods and governance in Nigeria’s Medium Term National Development Plan (2021–2025). Her multimedia policy research on the role of community health workers in advancing equitable health access was recognized with an award from the Development Research and Projects Center in Nigeria. She is the co-editor of Reclaiming Africa’s Development Narrative, a collection of essays exploring the colonial legacies, power dynamics and inequities embedded in development funding and philanthropy, and examining pathways toward more equitable and African-led approaches to development. As a Senior Atlantic Fellow at LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, she has delivered lectures on the intersections of creative arts, inequality, and social change.
Ms. Phido holds an M.Sc. in inequalities and social science from the London School of Economics and Political Science, an MPH in global maternal and child health from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and a B.A. in biology with a minor concentration in French from Clark University.
