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Katherine Bain

Senior Fellow

Ms. Katherine Bain is a governance, innovation and learning consultant in international development. At Results for Development (R4D), she works on the Leveraging Transparency and Reducing Corruption (LTRC) program as a senior fellow, providing technical expertise and support on building coalitions for change, a key element at the core of LTRC.

Ms. Bain started her career at the grassroots level working with several community organizations throughout Latin America using participatory approaches to support local communities in protecting children’s rights and improving opportunities for families living in urban poverty.

With more than 30 years of experience, Ms. Bain has spent time at the senior-level in multilateral organizations, including managing portfolios of programs from field offices. She formerly held positions as technical director of the Learning, Evidence and Advocacy Program (LEAP) in Nigeria (financed by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office – FCDO), research associate at the Overseas Development Institute, country program manager in Ghana for the World Bank, senior governance specialist at the World Bank in Africa and Latin America, and political economy consultant with The Asia Foundation and the Natural Resources Governance Institute (NRGI), among others.

During her time at the World Bank, Ms. Bain authored several published reports on the role of civil society organizations and social capital in improving development outcomes, the politics of policy reform and systems change, and the organizational determinants and enabling factors to support innovation for results in international development bureaucracies.

Ms. Bain’s drive to serve communities in Latin America, Africa and Asia is furthered by her focus on how organizations can solve system-wide problems through adaptive approaches that allow locally-led teams to think and work politically to embed world class technical solutions at scale within complex local contexts. 

Ms. Bain received her MSc (with distinction) in social policy & planning in developing countries from the London School of Economics and political science and a BA in modern languages & political science from the University of Manchester.

Ms. Bain is fluent in Spanish and English.

Global & Regional Initiatives

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