Emily Akers
- Masters in International Development, Violence and Conflict, SOAS University
- BA, Journalism, Film and Media, Cardiff University
Emily is currently seconded as the Global Chief of Staff, working with DA’s CEO, Executive and Governance leadership to develop and execute the organisation’s global strategies.
Emily is also a Senior Project Leader, with consulting experience across various sectors and geographic regions. She has led multiple projects supporting Delivery Units (DUs), including the Prime Minister’s DU in Uganda, the Premier’s DU in Western Australia, and Ministerial Delivery Teams in Education (Ethiopia), Health (Nigeria) and beyond.
Working across practices, Emily has directly supported governments, philanthropies and international social impact funds such as IFAD and the Islamic Development Bank. She has also led product development for Delivery Institute work at DA, and contributed to DA's global response work on COVID-19 (including the Global Pathfinder Report).
Emily is an inaugural Advanced Regenerative Intelligence Fellow, qualifying in regenerative solutions through a program developed by the global climate experts who founded Project Drawdown. The program covered multi-sector regenerative approaches from the built environment through to biodiversity and carbon credits, agriculture, education, delivery chains and more. It also sought to answer the critical question: How do we redefine sustainability, pivot industries and transition from an endless growth to a regrowth economy?
Before joining DA, Emily established and scaled STIR Education, a systems-strengthening organisation designed to bring focus to the importance of intrinsic motivation at every level of Uganda’s and India’s education systems.
Emily has independently consulted on strategies for the Department for International Development (DfID), the UN Education Commission and philanthropic foundations across the region. She also founded a design thinking studio—the WILDcard—focused on equitable local governance.
