PBA's Authorised Practitioner Trainers...
undergo intensive coaching followed by rigorous and continuous performance reviews. They meet annually to exchange experiences and to review and revise our core training materials. Some of our trainers are internal partnership brokers, with full-time jobs, who make themselves available to train occasionally.
Most trainers are external partnership brokers, and are available to undertake PBA training worldwide as needed. All members of our training team are Accredited Partnership Brokers [link to Accreditation Programme page] and are actively engaged in partnering and partnership brokering. They are therefore able to bring up-to-date and relevant experience to their training work.
Meet our Authorised Practitioner Trainers
Arthi Patel
Arthi has over 20 years of experience designing, managing and evaluating multi-stakeholder international development programs and policies. Her first career as a human rights lawyer focused on working with migrants and refugees, building partnerships across legal and community organisations to empower migrant and refugee communities. Her recent work has focused on bringing together climate scientists with social scientists and local communities. Arthi is based in Australia.
Belinda Gorman
Belinda specialises in helping organisations achieve their goals through collaboration. She has worked as a collaboration and partnering practitioner for the last 15 years, with organisations across public, private and community sectors in Aotearoa and internationally. Belinda’s experience and qualifications span corporate sustainability, international development, and philanthropy. She is passionate about cultivating partnerships that leverage our human strengths (empathy, openness and curiosity) to tackle pressing social and environmental issues, in a way that benefits everyone. Belinda is based in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Bulbul Baksi
Bulbul has over 25 years of experience in the social development sector, working with grassroot NGOs as well as with government ministries and bilateral aid and international cooperation organisations. She supported public private partnerships and helped government agencies manage change processes. Her partnership brokering experience in the last 12 years focused on helping to build multi-stakeholder partnership processes, as well as strengthening capacities through training, mentoring and coaching. Bulbul is based in India.
Catherine Russ
Catherine has worked in senior and advisory roles in the humanitarian and development sectors. Her learning and development work includes setting up cross-sector collaborative initiatives, strategy development, facilitation and assessment of humanitarian training programs in countries including Sri Lanka, Sudan, Pakistan, Chad and Haiti. Her partnership brokering work has led her to specialising in partnerships and consortia work and supporting groups to develop skills and tools to maximise collaboration. Catherine is based in the United Kingdom.
Donna Leigh Holden
Donna has 30 years of experience as a consultant and senior manager of international development and humanitarian organisations and programs in Australia, Asia and the Pacific. Her consulting practice centres around the design and evaluation of multi-actor programs and brokering partnerships including with government agencies, multilateral banks, the private sector and NGOs. Donna is based in Australia.
Helga van Kampen
Helga is a partnership specialist, working independently since 2011. She supports complex global partnerships in developing, managing, reviewing and moving on processes. Helga supports professionals in the HOW of collaboration. She has worked with a wide variety of organizations from all sectors. Her work is done in the Netherlands and abroad (eg. Ethiopia, South Africa, South-Sudan, Turkey, Nigeria, DR Congo, Egypt, Uganda, Jordan). Helga is based in the Netherlands.
Joanna Pyres
Joanna has managed complex multi-stakeholder partnerships in UK and Europe and has experienced first hand the personal and organisational challenges involved in implementing collaborative approaches inside and across organisations. Passionate about sharing partnering and partnership brokering know-how and making it accessible, Joanna has been building personal and organisational capacity to partner since 2007. Joanna is based in India.
Jocelyne Daw
Jocelyne is a recognised leader and change maker in building authentic multiple-sector partnerships. She has built a career spanning four decades bringing diverse stakeholders and organisations into partnerships and keeping them productive and progressive. She is committed to helping people and organisations build capacity to make their partnerships more effective and impactful. Jocelyne is an internationally published author and speaker in innovation and collaboration. She is based in Canada.
Julie Mundy
Julie is a highly experienced partnerships specialist, working in Australia and widely across the Asia-Pacific region supporting a wide range of multi-stakeholder and cross-sectoral partnerships. This builds on a long and rewarding career in international development, leadership and governance. She focuses on complex partnering negotiations and reviews of partnerships, helping them to start off on the right footing and continuing to provide a value-add for all organisations involved. She also supports organisations and programs to establish and embed their partnering frameworks. Julie is based in Australia.
Kate Hayes
Kate is a highly experienced partnerships, organisational design and strategy specialist. She has over 25 years of senior level experience working across different sectors in Australia and in international development across Asia and the Pacific. Her core work, motivated by reconciliation in Australia and the ambition SDGs more broadly, is strategic and facilitative –seeding and facilitating partnerships and strategy across ideas, sectors, agencies, and communities. Kate is at her best serving multi-stakeholder partnerships grappling with complex issues. Kate is based in Australia.
Lola Gostelow
Having worked in international aid for over 30 years, Lola has extensive operational, advocacy and research experience. Now focusing on partnership brokering, she supports varied forms of collaborations through training practitioners from across the globe; supporting change processes in organisations; facilitating and capturing learning in partnerships; and working with partner organisations to revise their partnering approaches and ambitions. Lola currently chairs the CHS-Alliance, and has a regular teaching slot at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, on Humanitarian Policy. Lola is based in the United Kingdom.
Mariana Merelo Lobo
Mariana is an international humanitarian and development practitioner with 20 years of experience.She has a specific passion for partnership brokering,collective action and learning, training, facilitation, and foresight based strategic development. Much of this experience is through leading roles in a variety of conflict, humanitarian and sustainable development settings. She is currently brokering various multi-stakeholder and cross-sector collaborations through equitable and effective participatory approaches. Mariana is based in the Netherlands.
Michelle Halse
Michelle is a highly-experienced partnering, collaboration and innovation specialist with experience in international development, global innovation challenges, and social entrepreneurship. She has brokered partnerships with consortia for international health, humanitarian capacity building, vulnerable children and families, women’s legal services, education, livelihoods and social inclusion in the UK, USA, Australia, across the Asia-Pacific and Africa. She has worked in catalytic philanthropy building collaborations to support collective impact initiatives. Michelle is based in Australia.
Victoria Thom
Victoria is an experienced social impact strategist. Her career spans business consulting, international development, corporate sustainability, philanthropy, and social enterprise, which has helped build her perspectives on how complex problems can be addressed through diverse thinking and effective multi-stakeholder collaboration and governance. She has worked as both an internal and independent broker in Australia and internationally to enable cross-sector partnerships and platforms for social and environmental impact. Victoria is based in Australia.
Yeshe Smith
Yeshe is a highly experienced partnership broker and partnering skills trainer. Her partnering practice developed from over 20 years working in international development, scoping, designing and managing cross-sectoral partnerships for social change across private sector, NGOs, government, community and faith-based organisations, health, education, and research partnerships. Yeshe has a particular interest in navigating race and culture in the partnering environment. Yeshe is based in Australia.
