25. Governing Well with Aseem Prakash and Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken

Embodying change: Transforming power, culture and well-being in aid organisations

Melissa speaks with Aseem Prakash and Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken about how governing boards of aid organisations can “govern well.” They discuss the power dynamics present in any group of humans, embracing difference and true diversity, prioritising lived experience, modelling behaviours, and asking smart questions.

Professor Prakash studies NGOs and nonprofits, and voluntary/private regulation, environmental policy and climate governance. He is a widely published author. He has a B.A. (Hons) in Economics from St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi in 1986 and MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad in 1988. Since 2002, he has served on the faculty of the Department of Political Science at University of Washington, Seattle. He won the European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group on Regulatory Governance's 2018 Regulatory Studies Development Award that recognises a senior scholar who has made notable "contributions to the field of regulatory governance." To learn more about Aseem, check out his website: http://aseemprakash.net. He edited a symposium for Regulation & Governance on Dysfunctional Institutions here https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/17485991/2016/10/2.

Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken is an experienced INGO and philanthropic actor-focused consultant, leadership development trainer, and coach, change management expert, author, evaluator, and analyst with strong knowledge of international development, civil society organizations, leadership development, organizational development/organizational change, social development and gender and leadership. Co-author of ‘Between Power and Irrelevance: the Future of Transnational NGOs’, with Hans Peter Schmitz and George Mitchell, and published by Oxford University Press (July 2020). Co-author of several academic articles in peer-reviewed journals; author of many practitioner-oriented reports, blog posts, and essays. Podcast host of ‘NGO Soul+Strategy’. To learn more about Tosca, check out her website: https://5oaksconsulting.org/about-tosca/

• Tosca’s essay on culture as an explainer for INGO scandals: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/npf-2019-0031/html?lang=en
• Tosca’s essay for the CIVICUS State of Civil Society report related essay (2019): https://www.civicus.org/index.php/re-imagining-democracy/overviews/3371-internal-democracy-within-transnationally-operating-non-governmental-organisations-are-we-as-democratic-as-we-think
• And the episode featuring Tosca's and Aseem's conversation on the virtue narrative: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/037-we-need-to-rethink-the-virtue-narrative/id1498390711?i=1000558519586

Read the Governing Well report here: https://www.chsalliance.org/get-support/resource/governing-well/

***Thanks to Ziada Abeid for editing the show.***