Chris Elias is the president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Development Program, which spends $4 billion a year on health and poverty programs. With great power comes great responsibility, and a set of tough decisions on which of the world's many crucial health problems they can strategically invest in. In this conversation, Chris talks about how they make these decisions, assess and take on risk, and work with the private sector to generate breakthrough health solutions for the world’s poor.  

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Jan Egeland is one of the world’s most experienced peace negotiators, having worked on the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Peace Accords, as well as mediation efforts in South Sudan, Uganda, Guatemala, and now in Syria. He is currently the Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the largest humanitarian organizations in the world. This is the episode to listen to if you want to understand how to broker a peace deal. They unravel the complex questions of who to invite to the negotiating table, how to negotiate once you have them at the table to get to a solution, and when pursuing negotiations doesn’t make sense.

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This episode is a taping from a live recording at Devex World in Washington DC, where Grant and Ravi talked to Kanika Bahl, CEO of Evidence Action. 'This interview gets into the nuts and bolts of how to innovative in aid, how to take solutions developed in one place to new contexts, and how to scale them to many contexts while maintaining quality. They discuss the perils and promises of how lessons from the development sector apply to humanitarian contexts and what we should expect of innovation in the future. 

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As a social entrepreneur and founder of Girls Who Code, Reshma Saujani is uniquely placed to talk about innovation - and the role of failure in that process. She talks to Ravi and Grant about creating ideas, taking them to scale, and the culture of ‘failing fast’, and what that looks like when you’re running a global non-profit.

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Wilmot Collins is mayor of Helena, Montana, and in this episode, he tells Ravi and Grant about his journey from Liberia, and the harrowing story of how he left the country. He went on to resettle in Montana, and last year won the mayoral election to become the state’s first black mayor in over 100 years. He talks about how he deals with anti-refugee sentiment, and why his experiences have led him to advocate for refugees in the national conversation around resettlement. Displaced is produced by the Vox Media Podcast Network in partnership with the International Rescue Committee. For more on the show: rescue.org/displaced. Email us at [email protected]

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Bob Kitchen spends every day makings decisions on if - and how - to respond to rapid onset humanitarian emergencies globally. As the International Rescue Committee’s Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response, he directs the team at the IRC that deploys into crises within 72 hours to provide life saving assistance to those critically in need. 

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The war in Afghanistan is the longest war in U.S. history and it has cost roughly 1 trillion dollars, left over 170,000 dead, and displaced another 4 million people. In this episode, we examine how to end wars through the lens of Afghanistan with Vali Nasr, the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and former senior advisor to Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke. 

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“It’s not about a technology that we’re looking for something to do with, it’s about a problem that we’re trying to solve and and then thinking about how technology helps with it.” Carolyn Miles is CEO of Save the Children USA, and in this conversation she talks to Grant and Ravi about innovative solutions for helping children in crisis situations. She also talks about why women and girls are disproportionately affected by war and conflict, and the challenge of changing behaviors to adopt new solutions to old problems.

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Dr. Helene Gayle has unparalleled experience in leading organizations that respond to crisis. Dr. Gayle spent over 20 years working on HIV/AIDS at the Center for Disease Control while also serving as the Chief of the HIV/AIDS Division for USAID, was the CEO for CARE International, led the McKinsey Social Initiative, and now serves as the head of the Chicago Community Trust. In this episode, Dr. Gayle shares lessons learned of how to lead, refine strategy, and focus. She reflects on the parallels between the HIV/AIDS crisis of 30 years ago and the refugee crisis of today, how to change the politics of toxic narratives, and how to make difficult decisions in the face of crisis. This interview covers a lot of ground and explores crucial organizational and political questions.

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Over half of the 65 million people displaced right now are children, yet only 2% of total humanitarian spend is allocated to education during crises. Given that refugees are displaced for over 12 years means that entire generations often forgo education. In this episode, Grant and Ravi talk with Sarah Smith, the IRC’s Senior Director of Education, a leading expert in education in humanitarian settings. They discuss how to think about education in crisis settings, what models are promising for delivering education at scale, and explore frontier innovations in education - including the IRC’s new partnership with Sesame Street, which aims to bring muppets (and social change) to a generation of refugees and host communities in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq.

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