The Sector Debrief

The Sector Debrief brings you inside the real conversations that shape the humanitarian and development world. No polished lines. No scripted answers. Just honest discussions about politics, funding, power, localization, pressure, and the future of crisis response.
Hosted by Ali Al Mokdad, Kim Kucinskas, and Thomas Jepson Lay, the show opens the door to the side of this sector that rarely appears in public.
If you want to understand what is truly happening beneath the surface, this is your seat at the table.

For more: thesectordebrief.com

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11 episodes
monthly
Avg 52 min
English

Episodes 11

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S1 · E11
September 20 · 1 hr 5 min
E11: The Joy of Collaboration Over Control
"Not having the control is actually quite liberating." In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad are joined by Susan le Jeune d'Allegeershecque, Secretary General of St John International, to talk about leadership and localisation inside an organisation that has been locally rooted from the start, with a long investment in local leadership. Today it is a federation of 44 independent charities and nearly 200,000 volunteers drawn from the communities they serve. Susan mentions the joy of not controlling and shares the opportunities and challenges she has witnessed in the journey of leading St John International. Thomas Jepson-Lay presses on localisation and the leadership trap of rushing to fix. Kim Kucinskas separates small-t from big-T transformation, and names the tension: not everyone can be brought along. Ali Al Mokdad argues that the electric light did not come from continuous improvement of the candle, and that leadership requires rethinking systems while also learning from past experience. Honest thinking, shared without scripts and without talking points. Chapters: (00:00) Cold open (00:31) Meet Susan le Jeune and St John (03:38) Locally led by design (06:23) Lessons from an organisation built that way (10:00) What headquarters and regions are for (15:40) The joy of leading without control (21:54) Tough decisions and living the values (25:55) Not everyone comes along (27:16) Investment in leadership, donors and funding (29:10) Changing leaders in a federation (39:42) What leaders of tomorrow need (43:26) Courage, curiosity and the electric light (47:03) Small t and big T transformation (52:57) One question back to the hosts (57:21) Hot debrief: the hosts on the conversation (1:05:12) Thank you
S1 · E10
August 28 · 1 hr 4 min
E10: Inside the Impact Alliance
"We are practising our way into what the future will look like." In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad are joined by Vanessa Self, Project Director of the Impact Alliance, the collaboration between CARE, Mercy Corps, and Save the Children, created when three CEOs, Michelle Nunn, Tjada D'Oyen McKenna, and Janti Soeripto, came together aiming for deeper collaboration and efficiency. Vanessa Self is honest about the initiative: collaboration is slower, harder, and less intuitive than the slogans suggest. And about what it opened: while the sector talked about what to cut, this became a space for what could be. She walks through the three workstreams that survived the testing of 81 possibilities: collaborative procurement, with potential savings she puts at around ten million dollars over the coming year, a community insights engine she calls accountability, but not as you know it, and scale works, which takes interventions that already have an evidence base and helps governments scale them. Along the way, partnership mapping revealed the organisations share only around 2% of their partners. Ali Al Mokdad asks what it takes to scale the collaboration that already exists at country and field level, and draws the line between efficiency and transformation. Kim Kucinskas presses on how change happens in a system designed to keep organisations fragmented. Thomas Jepson-Lay calls the Alliance a canary in the coal mine, and asks why agility still needs a CEO. And when the conversation ends, the microphones stay on. Kim, Thomas, and Ali stay behind for a debrief: what excited them, what frustrated them, and what the Impact Alliance really signals about how willing the sector is to change. Honest thinking, shared without scripts and without talking points. ------------------- Learn more about the Impact Alliance: The three CEOs on why they are uniting (Devex): https://www.devex.com/news/we-are-uniting-to-change-the-future-of-aid-and-hope-funders-will-follow-112655 CARE: https://www.care.org/about-us/strategic-partners/impact-alliance/ Mercy Corps: https://www.mercycorps.org/who-we-are/impact-alliance Chapters: (00:00) Cold open (01:16) Where the Impact Alliance began (04:43) How the idea landed with staff (09:31) Practising, not theorising (15:53) Is this a merger? (17:25) From 81 possibilities to three workstreams (23:35) What it looks like at country level (27:10) The Somalia procurement story (30:28) Not survivalism (35:04) Just starting to start (41:29) Efficiency and transformation (45:09) Small-t transformation (47:22) A canary in the coal mine (49:24) The message to funders (51:38) Taking the Alliance to UNGA (55:59) The Hot Debrief (59:31) Panarchy and feedback loops (1:03:36) Wishing the Alliance well
S1 · E9
July 10 · 50 min
E9: What Do You Tell the Next Generation?
"As educators, we need to start thinking about what we're educating people on." In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad work through a question all three keep getting asked. What do you tell a student, an emerging leader, or a colleague who just lost their job, about a career in humanitarian and development work, when the old pathway into it no longer exists the way it used to? The conversation moves between the personal and the structural. Ali Al Mokdad shares what he hears from students and early career leaders across the Global South and Global North, and returns to a distinction that shapes how he thinks about artificial intelligence: purpose versus task. The task, writing the email, taking the notes, is disappearing into artificial intelligence. The purpose behind it, overseeing a project, building judgement, learning how an organisation actually works, should not. Kim Kucinskas presses harder still. If entry-level roles disappear, where does the next generation get the hard-won judgement leadership actually requires? And if a seat at the table survives, does it just teach them the same power structures everyone says need to change? Ali Al Mokdad speaks about the hat he wears as a humanitarian diplomat: building bridges, keeping the door open when others choose to close it. Thomas Jepson-Lay closes on leadership identity, and the strange advantage emerging leaders have: they don't need to unlearn a version of leadership built for a world that no longer exists. Honest thinking, shared without scripts and without talking points.
S1 · E8
June 9 · 51 min
E8: Rethinking Risk Management in the Humanitarian and Development Sector
In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad are joined by Sabrina M. Segal, Director of The Risk Collaborative, who has spent years working on how organisations in the humanitarian and development sector actually think about risk. Her argument: risk is not compliance. It is the effect of uncertainty on objectives, and most of the sector has been doing it backwards, starting from a list of everything that might go wrong instead of from what the work is trying to achieve. The conversation moves between the practical and the structural, and Sabrina does not stop at the critique. She offers the tools. Start from the objective, then treat risk as a two-sided coin of threats and opportunities, because a sector that only looks at the downside loses half its creativity. Do the analysis upstream while the objective is still being designed, so the numbers can defend a budget when a funder reaches for the red pen. Run a three plus three strategy instead of a five year plan nobody can escape two years in. Replace endless prediction with organisational fragility work, her phrase is "don't predict, prepare", because over-reliance on one big funder sat on every risk register for years and the registers saved no one. And use the three P framework, Project, Partner, Patron, which reframes a women's organisation in Sudan judged high risk for lacking an insurance market that does not exist, and plots funders on a line from command and control to trust to see how far they will actually bend. Ali Al Mokdad reflects on how risk gets branded to win attention from headquarters, and why what a process leaves out often says more than what it includes. Kim Kucinskas builds on this with the idea of risk as a crack of opportunity, a language people in power actually listen to. Thomas Jepson-Lay presses on competing objectives and the fear of failure, and what happens when protecting the organisation quietly replaces protecting its purpose. It lands on what Ali calls the generational fight: clearing out the inherited compliance, outdated governance, and habits that drain the sector's energy, so the people who come next can spend theirs on the things that actually matter, climate, hunger, health, rather than the machinery around them. Honest thinking, shared without scripts and without talking points.
S1 · E7
May 27 · 49 min
E7: Donations, Collaboration, and AI in the Room
"This is not just a funding problem. It is a social contract problem." A mother and two children spend their Sunday knocking on doors, collecting donations for an NGO. Ali's brain goes straight to overhead costs and financial flows. Then he stops. What he is actually watching is people practicing values, not talking about them. Showing their children what solidarity looks like. Asking strangers to be part of something bigger than themselves. The social contract, in its simplest form. That moment sets the tone for the whole conversation. From there, Ali Al Mokdad, Kim Kucinskas, and Thomas Jepson-Lay move through two of the sector's most overused and under-examined ideas. Collaboration, which gets declared as a value but rarely built as a discipline. When organisations face complex problems, they cannot afford simple tools. Collaboration in the humanitarian and development sector requires a specific skill set, intentional leadership, and structures that most organisations have never built. And artificial intelligence, which is generating requirements on one side and generating compliance on the other, while the humans in between are still the ones holding it together. Artificial intelligence agents can process, produce, and automate. But they do not coordinate with each other, they do not question whether what they are building is real, and they do not replace the human judgment that makes any of it meaningful. Three practitioners. No script. Thinking out loud about the sector they work in, what is breaking down, and what might actually be worth building next.
S1 · E6
May 7 · 50 min
E6: The Sector Is Changing. How Do You Make Sense Of It?
“This is not just a funding problem. It's a social contract problem." Kim Kucinskas came back from a month on the road and needed to think out loud. This episode is that conversation.By using Kim’s experiences at a curated gathering of bridge builders and network weavers in Buenos Aires, and the Skoll World Forum in Oxford as real examples, Ali Al Mokdad, Kim Kucinskas, and Thomas Jepson-Lay work through what it means to make sense of a sector in transition, what is civil society actually for, and why aren't people experiencing it as a public good anymore?They talk about the difference between assimilating information and actually shifting your frame. About why staff in aid organisations are grieving the loss of an idea, not just the loss of colleagues or funding. About identity: who global south leaders are being told they are versus who they are choosing to become. And about the Three Horizons model: why the future will not be one new dominant system, and why that is actually the good news.
S1 · E5
March 29 · 54 min
E5: Who Are You in the Room, Identity vs Positionality, and Leadership in Times of Disruption
What does it mean to truly know who you are — and how you show up — in the spaces you occupy?In Episode 5 of The Sector Debrief, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad are joined by Aisha Tambajang, a humanitarian and development leader who has navigated identity, race, positionality, and belonging across The Gambia, Denmark, and the UK.The conversation moves between the deeply personal and the structurally urgent. Aisha Tambajang unpacks the difference between identity and positionality — what you carry versus where you stand in relation to power — and shares what it felt like to be seen as a Black woman in Denmark when she saw herself as Danish, and what it meant to return to The Gambia and occupy an entirely different position in the same system. Thomas Jepson-Lay reflects on ancestral guilt, the discomfort of transition, and what it means to leave the formal humanitarian system while still holding humanity as a core value. Kim Kucinskas builds on this with a sharp observation — that leaders who have never had to think about how they show up are now experiencing that discomfort for the first time, and it is jarring.Ali Al Mokdad brings reflections from Dubai, where leaders are responding to institutional shock not by rushing to survive, but by investing in values-based leadership and the kind of moral clarity the sector rarely prioritizes. Contrasted with Geneva, where too many conversations, he observes, are still starting from guidelines written for a world that no longer exists. As Ali Al Mokdad put it — "I feel like I spent my time at HQ level explaining HQ to the field, and the field to HQ." A tension that defines the sector, and one that this episode does not shy away from.Thomas Jepson-Lay captures the sharpest contrast of the episode in one line. There is a rush to fix. And there is a curiosity to solve. They are not the same thing. And which one you default to says everything about where you are standing, and who you think you are in the room.Honest thinking, shared without scripts, without talking points, and with reflections.Aisha Tambajang profile:https://www.linkedin.com/in/aisha-tambajang-81129b1b0/
S1 · E4
March 7 · 52 min
E4: The CEO Perspective, Urgent Patience, and Why Idealism Is Not Naivety
In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad are joined bySofia Sprechmann Sineiro, a humanitarian leader who spent three decades inside the sector, from volunteering to becoming Secretary General of CARE International. One of the leading voices for locally led development and one of the leaders of the Pledge for Change, her journey took her across the globe, leading through some of the most challenging moments the sector has faced. The conversation moves between the personal and the systemic. Sofia reflects on the tightrope she walked for thirty years, learning to speak the language of the system in order to survive inside it, while never losing sight of what she originally came to change. Kim Kucinskas and Thomas Jepson-Lay build on this, exploring pragmatic optimism, authenticity under pressure, and what it actually means to live your values when survival is on the line. Ali Al Mokdad shares a deeply personal story of crisis, isolation, and the technique he developed to hold himself together when the organisation he worked for did not. The conversation also travels into what locally led truly means, beyond the label, and the different models already proving it works, while also reflecting on a recent article written by Thomas Jepson-Lay that sparked thoughts on values under pressure, and the courage and curiosity required to lead in times of crisis. Honest thinking, shared without scripts, without talking points, and without pretending the sector is fine. Links: Sofia Sprechmann Sineiro Profile Sofia Linkedin The article by Thomas , The Receptive Mind: How Knowledge Encounters Shape Us
S1 · E3
February 7 · 43 min
E3: Humanitarian Leadership Under Pressure, Identity vs Strategy, and What Comes Next
In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad explore what it means to lead in a humanitarian system under pressure. The conversation moves between personal reflection and system-level questions, touching on identity versus strategy, survival versus imagination, and the growing gap between grassroots innovation and large institutional responses. Ali Al Mokdad reflects on a recent visit to Geneva and the dissonance he felt between local organisations experimenting with new governance, partnerships, and models, and larger institutions focused on survival and funding. Kim Kucinskas and Thomas Jepson-Lay build on this, unpacking values under pressure, leadership identity, reputational risk, and the emotional toll of navigating change while keeping organisations afloat. Together, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad reflect on systems breaking, multiple futures emerging, and the uncomfortable but necessary work of letting go of old ways. There are no answers offered, only better questions, shared honestly, without scripts or talking points.
S1 · E2
January 20 · 51 min
E2: What does sector mean, leadership tension, and change
In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad explore what the word sector actually means, responding to feedback from the first episode, and whether it still reflects the complexity of the work or the people inside it. The conversation moves into humanitarian diplomacy, rising leadership tension, and growing reputational pressure across the ecosystem. They reflect on systems breaking, new forms beginning to emerge, and the uncomfortable but necessary process of letting go of old ways of working, including the real damage that can happen during the transition.The conversation is fully unscripted, thinking out loud, and sharing thoughts as they come.
S1 · E1
Dec 13, 2025 · 47 min
E1: What this space is about, leadership and reflections
This first episode sets the tone for the series. Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad talk about what this space is about, share reflections on leadership, and discuss the habits and practices they use to reflect and think.

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