Ajoy Datta
Ajoy is a PlanAdapt Fellow, based in London, United Kingdom.
Ajoy has over 20 years of experience in the international development and humanitarian sector with a focus on understanding and influencing change processes in individuals, teams, organisations, and networks, working across a number of policy issues including climate change and the environment. He spent over a decade at the UK-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and almost four years at On Think Tanks (OTT) Consulting, stepping down as director of programmes at the beginning of 2022.
He has expertise in the following areas:
- Group, organisational and leadership dynamics
- Foresight and strategy processes
- Learning and capacity development
- Networks and communities of practice
- Understanding political and policy processes
- Policy engagement, research uptake and knowledge brokering
- Decision making systems and the use of knowledge
- Partnerships and trans-disciplinarity
- Equity and justice
He has experience as a team leader, researcher, evaluator, facilitator and coach. He has worked with a variety of organisations including foundations, government agencies, academia, NGOs, IFIs, UN agencies and large consulting firms. He has also worked, and partnered with organisations, in several regions including: sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, North America and the Middle East and North Africa.
Notable assignments have included:
- Providing organisational development support to think tanks (such as GAP and IPRE), consulting firms (OTT) and NGOs (St Hilda’s and Mawazo)
- Supporting the South African Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) and Zimbabwean Ministry of Youthto improve the way they make decisions and use evidence (funded by DFID BCURE).
- Leading a team to undertake phase 1 of a strategy refresh process for the Hewlett Foundation’s programme to improve Transparency, Participation and Accountability in sub-Saharan Africa.
- Supporting IDRC to understand how and how well they learn as an organisation about their work to scale impact
- Leading a year long program of learning to improve the leadership capacities of mid-career think tankers from around the world (funded IDRC’s Think Tank Initiative, TTI).
- Studies of the policymaking process in countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Nepal and South Africa on a range of issues including climate change, the environment, the economy, disaster risk reduction and disaster response amongst others.
- A review of a network called ebpdn using the Network Functions Approach – a framework to help think about what a network or community does and how.
- Supporting FAO policy officers to improve their policy engagement capacities and leading a team to undertake an evaluation of the Gates foundation’s support to its Global Fund Advocacy Portfolio.
- Supporting a group of UK based researchers from numerous academic disciplines to improve their collaborative practices (funded by UK NERC).
He has an MA in Consulting and Leading in Organisations from the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, UK, an MSc in Development Studies from SOAS, UK and an Meng in Manufacturing Engineering with Management from Durham University, UK. He also has a foundation certificate in group analysis from the Institute of Group Analysis (IGA) and is part of a community of practice run by the University of Hertfordshire’s Complexity and Management Centre.
He is a member of ISPSO, OPUS and the Eco-leadership Institute
His publications can be found on Researchgate
Many of his articles can be found on Medium and on OTT
You can view his LinkedIn profile
He also has a personal website