LIFT is delighted to welcome our new Fund Director Katy Webley to the LIFT team.
Katy joined LIFT on June 13 to replace Andrew Kirkwood who has taken on the role of UNOPS Director and Representative in Myanmar.
Katy has 21 years’ experience designing and overseeing development projects in Asia and Africa. She has been in Myanmar for the last three years as the Director for Programme Development, Quality and Advocacy with Save the Children.
LIFT interviewed Katy about her background and her new role at LIFT.
Can you tell us about your background and the experience you bring to your new role at LIFT?
I started my career as a primary school teacher in the UK and then went overseas in 1996, as a teacher-trainer working with the Ministry of Education in Eritrea working on in-service training for hundreds of teachers in a newly independent nation that had experienced conflict. Altogether I spent 10 years in the Horn of Africa - in Eritrea, south Sudan and Ethiopia – and this is where I met my husband. I spent several more years working in education, including time at London headquarters as advisor and then global head of education for Save the Children. In this role I was privileged to visit and support countries around the world. We returned to Africa in 2010, by then with two children, where I led the growth and quality of Save the Children’s largest country programme in Ethiopia. We had a diverse multi-sectoral portfolio, including food security, livelihoods, nutrition and social protection. In 2014, I came to Myanmar, where the aim was to move away from small, disconnected projects to coherent multi-year programmes contributing to evidence and emerging policy agendas.
My key experiences of relevance to LIFT, I believe, are my enjoyment of designing and implementing strategies using participatory and engaging processes; achieving strong donor engagement; an appreciation of policy analysis and advocacy to really create sustainable change, and my familiarity with Myanmar.
What are you looking forward to in your new role at LIFT?
I am fortunate to be joining a highly competent and steady fund management team working effectively with a strong fund board, with Andrew still here for questions and guidance. I am looking forward to the opportunity to work more closely with government in this ever-transforming nation and to learn about LIFT’s work in some areas that are new to me - areas like financial inclusion, value chain development and labour migration. I am excited by the energy and attention to learning at LIFT and the opportunity we have to apply this to a post-2018 context. I hope to sustain all that is going well and welcome ideas for what could be better!
