Authors

Our Regular Authors

Maya Assaf Horstmeier, Associated Director for Conflict Sensitivity, World Vision International

Maya Assaf-Horstmeier has been working with us for 12 years, mainly focusing on programming in humanitarian contexts. She brings experience from both a National Office and field perspective in disaster management programming including early warning and early action, disaster preparedness, and humanitarian response. In June 2017, Maya joined our Peacebuilding team as the Associate Director for Conflict Sensitivity. Maya's portfolio ensures the integration of conflict sensitivity across all of our programmes, using both micro and macro context analysis tools. A large part of her role is building capacity of staff in conflict sensitivity and context analysis, as well as leading context assessments where needed.

Nina Nepesova, Global Director for Humanitarian Policy and Advocacy, World Vision International

With over 13 years of experience in humanitarian relief and development Nina has covered issues ranging from fragile states governance, conflict resolution, transitions from relief to recovery, aid effectiveness and peacekeeping, to humanitarian funding and coordination, food security, displacement and protection. She continues to deploy to crisis affected countries on a regular basis to set up response operations and has worked in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Mali, Iraq, Jordan and Haiti. As part of her leadership role Nina represents our work in the humanitarian field at the United Nations. This includes engagements with the UN Security Council, Member States and UN Agencies with a primary focus on improving the protection of vulnerable children and civilians affected by conflict and disasters.

Julian Srodecki, Director of Innovative Finance, World Vision International

 

Julian works with programming offices, fundraising offices and technical teams around the world to improve our acquisition and management of grants, ensuring more resources reach children impacted by disaster. Externally, Julian contributes to the humanitarian industry’s thinking around financing, working with partners to analyse the current state of humanitarian finance, identify challenges, develop recommendations and influence for change.

 Thabani Maphosa, Global Director for Humanitarian Operations

Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, Thabani Maphosa is our Global Director for Humanitarian Operations. He leads a global team of humanitarian operational and technical specialists across our organisation to deliver quality relief programmes in fragile, conflict and humanitarian contexts. With a master’s degree in agriculture from the University of Zimbabwe, Thabani’s career has included 12 years with us in numerous countries across Southern Africa, a position as a Research Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe's Faculty of Agriculture and various consulting roles, including with PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Featured Authors

Rachel Criswell, Humanitarian Policy Specialist

Rachel works with humanitarian response teams to support grant acquisition and global relationship management with our multi-lateral partners in many countries. Rachel also served as the UNHCR vice-rapporteur in 2016 and will be the UNHCR rapporteur for 2016/ 2017 speaking behalf of the 958 NGO partners to the UNHCR executive.

Dan Kelly, Humanitarian and Emergency Affairs Expert

Dan has been engaged in international relief and development for the past 32 years.  As vice-president of our humanitarian and emergency affairs he has strategic oversight of our disaster management strategies and mechanisms and leads a global team of humanitarian specialists to deliver quality child-focused response programmes, humanitarian policy, research and evidence-based learning.  Dan has worked extensively in operational and humanitarian leadership roles across Kenya, Uganda, and Sudan.  With a Master Degree in International Agriculture & Rural Development focused on the engagement of Non-Government Organisations on community-based relief and development programmes he is a passionate believer in empowering communities as first-responders and working with local and international partners to improve the humanitarian system for children.

Erin Joyce, Child Protection and Conflict Specialist 

Erin is our global lead on child protection and children in conflict and works with humanitarian response teams to ensure that Child Protection is central to all of our operations in conflict contexts. Erin also represents us on the Global Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action and Child Protection Area of Responsibility (AoR), supporting our global campaign to end violence against children campaign activities. Erin has been with us for over 7 years, primarily working in the Australian support office on Humanitarian Emergency Affairs (HEA), but also undertaking a one year deployment with our Sri Lankan office's HEA team (post conflict recovery). Erin's has been deployed to Haiti, Sahel Response, South Sudan and Iraq and undertaken 2 Global Centre HEA secondments as Emergency Management System Coordinator.

Elika Dadsetan, Education in Emergencies Specialist 

Elika is an Education and Emergencies Specialist who has worked with our global team, providing technical assistance to projects around the world, as well as a Project Manager for No Lost Generation, where she helped design and implement our emergency education and protection response for children displaced by the ongoing conflict in Syria.

Elika has more than 5 years experience in both development and humanitarian contexts in the Middle East and African regions. Her work has included developing a literacy program in West Africa for youth in detention, utilizing mobile phones as a platform for phonetic literacy text messaging, and creating a nonprofit, WordPlay!, focusing on storytelling as trauma healing for the refugee population in San Diego.

Elika also has years of experience as an educator and is passionate about designing innovative programs that help give children access to quality education.