Theory of Change

Devex
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Theory of Change is a podcast about the future of global development — and the people trying to reshape it. Hosted by Devex Senior Reporter Michael Igoe, the show features candid conversations with leaders in philanthropy, foreign policy, technology, finance, media, and humanitarian aid about the forces transforming how global change actually happens: power, politics, money, influence, and ideas. Not a panel. A conversation with a real person. Episodes are published every Tuesday. Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@devex The podcast is produced by Devex Associate Editor Thomas Cserép and Mai Ylagan.

  1. 2d ago

    Live from UNGA with David Beasley

    In a live episode of the Theory of Change podcast recorded at the Devex Impact House in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, David Beasley, the former World Food Programme executive director and former governor of South Carolina, laid out his playbook for navigating today’s increasingly hostile political climate — while leaving the door at least somewhat open for his own return to the political arena. Beasley — who led the U.N.’s food security agency when it won the Nobel Peace Prize — shared his journey from working in South Carolina tobacco fields to negotiating with the Taliban to feed starving children to battling with billionaire Elon Musk on Twitter. He described the culture shock of a United Nations outsider confronted with bureaucracy and jargon, and offered his diagnosis for why the development sector keeps getting its pitch wrong. Beasley offered a bleak assessment of current humanitarian aid cuts, calling the domestic political environment “horrific” and warning that Western nations are actively undermining their own geopolitical stability. “America is great because America is good, and if we ever cease to be good, we cease to be great. And right now, we're not being good,” he said.

  2. Sep 15

    Is the global humanitarian system collapsing?

    In an interview on Devex's Theory of Change podcast, Alight CEO Jocelyn Wyatt warned that the traditional humanitarian business model is facing structural failure. Following the collapse of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the transition of U.S. foreign aid programs to the U.S. State Department, organizations are having to rely on more rigid grants from United Nations agencies that typically cap overhead at 7%, leaving virtually no resources for operational leadership, compliance, or innovation, Wyatt said. Global humanitarian assistance fell by roughly 30% between 2022 and 2025, with 13 of the 20 largest donors cutting relief aid in 2025, according to the latest State of the Humanitarian System report, released last week. Wyatt highlighted how structural defects and funding restrictions in the traditional framework actively undermine long-term progress: The misallocation problem: Private donor funding floods highly publicized, geopolitical conflicts (such as Ukraine), while long-term, acute humanitarian disasters (such as Sudan) receive virtually no private support due to public narrative fatigue, donor bias, and political media coverage.Survival over solutions: With institutional funds shrinking, remaining aid is strictly funneled into immediate lifesaving care, stripping away funding for education, job training, and economic development that actually helps people transition out of displacement.Failing durable pathways: The three traditional solutions for refugees — returning home, integrating locally, or third-country resettlement — have largely stalled or collapsed under political and financial strain. “This world order and these systems that were developed post-World War II have seemed like they're hitting their expiration date, and they will need to be reinvented. But that is not happening in 2026 or 2027, probably 2028. So in the interim, we need to find ways to help people be able to provide for themselves and their families,” Wyatt said. To survive the breakdown of the traditional model, Wyatt argues that humanitarian organizations must pivot toward financial self-reliance and market-driven solutions. “Let's actually put our resources to social enterprise models where we can recycle capital, where we can help people start businesses. Let's actually train people and connect them with employers so that they can get jobs and make money for themselves,” she said. “To think that governments are going to be the continuous providers of financial support to refugees ... I think is just a fallacy at this point,” she added.

  3. Sep 8

    Is it OK to take 'tainted money'?

    In the latest episode of the Theory of Change podcast, human rights activist Kavita Nandini Ramdas discussed the deep systemic contradictions of modern philanthropy, its uneasy relationship with grassroots activism, and why nonprofit organizations must stop playing quiet to keep elite funding. Ramdas, currently a senior strategic adviser at the International Planned Parenthood Federation, has spent years fighting both inside and outside major philanthropy — including as a close adviser to some of the world’s most prominent foundation leaders. What she sees today is a philanthropic sector that is “running afraid from Trump” and recipient organizations that rarely challenge their funders. “It’s really as though we’ve gone back to the medieval ages and Lady Bountiful is riding on her white horse and throwing crumbs to the masses below and we're scurrying around saying, ‘Thank you so much, thank you so much,’” she said. “It’s as though we’ve gone back to feudal times.” The argument: Nonprofits must replace groveling with accountability. “Take the money, but have the damn courage to stand up and say, ‘This action was racist. This intervention is not acceptable,’” Ramdas said. Taking elite funding creates a direct “obligation to voice” — not a mandate for silence. On the Gates Foundation: Ramdas directly called out Bill Gates over his foundation’s agricultural strategy in Africa during a meeting. She pointed out that the Green Revolution had already been an environmental disaster in India — destroying topsoil and drying up aquifers in Punjab — and asked why they were selling the exact same flawed model to Africa. As a result, they brought her in as an adviser. On Adele Simmons, former head of the MacArthur Foundation: “Here she was, this extraordinary person with three young kids — and what she had to deal with, this casual sexism that I saw thrown at her.” On Darren Walker, former head of the Ford Foundation: He told Ramdas that “culture eats strategy for breakfast” — a truth she applies now to philanthropy, noting that no matter how progressive a foundation’s strategy claims to be, it is constantly swallowed by the surrounding patriarchal and capitalist culture.

  4. Sep 1

    Can communities help refugees where governments fail?

    In the latest episode of the Theory of Change podcast, Nazanin Ash, CEO of Welcome.US, discussed how community-driven sponsorship could revolutionize refugee resettlement, bypass political gridlock, and offer a scalable alternative to overburdened government systems. Global forced displacement is at an all-time high, and standard, bureaucratic response models are failing to keep pace. Ash argued that mobilizing local communities rather than relying solely on government aid can unlock massive potential and provide orderly, human-centered pathways for newcomers. The problem: Traditional global systems are built for short-term, state-versus-state displacement, but modern conflicts — predominantly civil wars — are protracted, lasting decades on average. As a result, massive, unmanaged crises crowd out long-term development funds. “Civil wars burn forever. They’re really tough to resolve. And our international tools for conflict resolution are really bad at solving them,” Ash said. By the numbers: By shifting the focus from a government-managed process to direct community sponsorship, Ash said that Welcome.US demonstrated unprecedented scale during recent crises such as the war in Ukraine: 800,000 newcomers welcomed by American communities in under three yearsFour times as many individuals resettled through private sponsorship than through formal U.S. government pathways over the same timeframe$7 billion in time and money leveraged directly by local sponsors to pay for travel, housing, and integration2 million Americans across 26,000 zip codes participated in sponsoring displaced individuals“The appetite for doing this is so strong. The capacity to do it is so real,” Ash said. Unlike formal government systems that assign refugees to fixed locations based on strict physical requirements, Ash said that private matching platforms allow newcomers to exercise choice and retain dignity. “If you know something about humanitarian crises and forced displacement … what you experience most acutely is the loss of choice and the loss of agency. And of course, nothing about our traditional systems lets you have that choice or agency,” she said. Meanwhile, community members who sponsored families have become active advocates, filing lawsuits, lobbying Congress, and defeating hundreds of anti-immigrant state bills. “Proximity changes what you protect,” Ash said. What to watch: Welcome.US currently operates in the United States, and Ash said the organization has plenty of work on its plate. “But we did purchase the rights to Welcome.world,” she added.

  5. Aug 25

    What does 'country ownership' really mean?

    What is “country ownership,” really? And what gets in the way of making it a reality? Against a backdrop of historic cuts to development assistance by many of the world’s largest donors, the chorus of voices calling for national governments to set — and finance — their own development agendas is growing louder. Yemi Osinbajo, the former vice president of Nigeria and co-chair of the Future of Development Cooperation Coalition, has seen firsthand what happens when international donors and national development priorities are aligned — or not. Osinbajo joined the Devex Theory of Change podcast to challenge the myths and misconceptions around state capacity, corruption, and international finance. "Forget about giving cash or aid. Let's focus on systemic changes that can release the resources that African countries need for their development,” Osinbajo says. That means targeting markets and value chains that currently disadvantage lower-income countries, through systemic partnerships rather than one-off handouts, he says. It also means being honest about who is complicit in propping up systems that are plagued by corruption, or biased against regions perceived as risky, whether they truly are or not.

  6. Aug 18

    How Jacqueline Novogratz invests for global change

    Twenty-five years ago, when Jacqueline Novogratz founded the impact investing nonprofit Acumen, she still had to prove that markets and entrepreneurship could work for people living in poverty — and help lift them out of it. In the years since, that has moved from a relatively fringe approach to fighting poverty, to the center of global development efforts. Development finance institutions, philanthropies, and asset managers are all looking for investable opportunities — and speaking the language of impact. But something else has happened to — or hasn’t happened — Novogratz said on Devex’s Theory of Change podcast. The institutions and individuals who could provide critical “patient capital” in the early, riskier phases when it is most effective, are not jumping in as needed. For Novogratz, it points to a needed reckoning for a social impact sector that has grown up, but still hasn’t realized its potential. “The capital that is available, and there's a lot of capital, is too expensive, it’s too risk averse, and as a result, we see a lot of talk and a lot of hand-wringing when we could be structuring that capital under the rubric of impact investing and really creating impact,” she says.

  7. Aug 11

    Mark Dybul says this was never the plan for PEPFAR

    For over two decades, the U.S. government has been a lynchpin in the global fight against HIV, pouring billions of dollars into treatment, prevention, and health systems strengthening through initiatives like the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. Then came Elon Musk, the foreign aid freeze, and a disruptive set of reforms to U.S. global health programs under President Donald Trump’s “America First” Global Health Strategy. Against the backdrop of this tumultuous moment, the question remains: Was the old framework built to sustain solutions, or merely to sustain itself? Mark Dybul, who led PEPFAR from 2006 to 2009, joined the Theory of Change podcast to deliver a blunt assessment of the legacy and current trajectory of foreign assistance. Reflecting on the evolution of former President George W. Bush’s signature global health initiative, Dybul addressed the sharp criticisms now driving a broader push for reform. While acknowledging the lifesaving impact of past initiatives, Dybul pointed to a fundamental failure in long-term strategy: The shift toward true local ownership never fully materialized. In Dybul’s view, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency surfaced uneasy truths about how the U.S. government has worked with countries to end the AIDS epidemic — and the opportunities that were missed along the way. "The diagnosis was correct. That indictment was correct. I mean, to be honest, it turned my stomach that 25 years later we were spending the same amount of money as when I walked out the door. That wasn't the plan." He also pushed back on projections that PEPFAR funding cuts could cause thousands of deaths, arguing that these underestimate governments’ ability to protect health programs — as well as opportunities for greater efficiency. As global health systems undergo a rapid overhaul, Dybul argues that the next 12 to 18 months represent a critical window. They must either adapt to a model centered on country sovereignty, local innovation, and mutual economic partnership, or risk watching the entire architecture collapse.

  8. Jul 28

    How Kakenya Ntaiya turned pain into progress

    Philanthropists and global development donors have made a lot of promises about supporting local leaders and community-based organizations. But their insistence on finding scalable models might be getting in the way of a simpler achievement: helping people. Kakenya Ntaiya is a one-woman case study in persistence.  As a girl in southwestern Kenya, she underwent the traditional Masaai practice of female genital mutilation — a precursor to marriage and motherhood. But she negotiated with her father to stay in school, secured a scholarship to attend college in the United States, and used her education to scrutinize the very cultural practices that she — and the other women in her village — were born into. As the founder of Kakenya’s Dream, a nonprofit organization, Ntaiya has returned to Kenya to open up spaces for discussion of cultural taboos — and educational opportunities for thousands of girls.  Ntaiya joined the Theory of Change podcast to share her experiences navigating complex community politics, pushing for cultural change, and confronting the blind spots in modern international philanthropy that get in the way of improving people’s lives.

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About

Theory of Change is a podcast about the future of global development — and the people trying to reshape it. Hosted by Devex Senior Reporter Michael Igoe, the show features candid conversations with leaders in philanthropy, foreign policy, technology, finance, media, and humanitarian aid about the forces transforming how global change actually happens: power, politics, money, influence, and ideas. Not a panel. A conversation with a real person. Episodes are published every Tuesday. Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@devex The podcast is produced by Devex Associate Editor Thomas Cserép and Mai Ylagan.

Information

  • Creator
    Devex
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    15
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright Devex
  • Show Website
    Theory of Change

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