Dominique De Bonis

Director & Independent Research Consultant , Strategy, Policy, Evidence & Institutional Change | Humanitarian & Development | Working Across the UN System, Bilateral Donors & Now the UK Charity Sector

Kent, United Kingdom

International development strategist, researcher, and consultant with 25+ years experience generating evidence and translating it into institutional change. Specialist in mixed-methods research, programme evaluation, and capacity development — with a track record of building teams, shaping corporate policy, and authoring frameworks that outlast individual engagements across 30+ countries worldwide

Contact Dominique De Bonis
Area of Expertise:
  • Capacity Building, Training, Advocacy
  • Disaster, Aid, Emergencies, Relief
  • Government, Governance, Reforms
  • Monitoring, Evaluation, Policy, Research, Analysis
  • Social, Education, Gender, Youth, Child
Professional Experience:

A specialist independent consultant with 25+ years of applied experience across international development and humanitarian response, working with UN agencies, bilateral donors, and international NGOs across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe.

Since founding Jumladee Change Management Ltd. in 2020, engagements have spanned institutional capacity assessment, mixed-methods research and evaluation, strategy development, and policy design — for clients including WFP, IOM, UNICEF, UNDP, Danida, Start Network UK, Development Pathways UK, and the Global Logistics Cluster. Recent work includes a comprehensive review of anticipatory action readiness for Start Network UK, five institutional capacity assessments across Jordanian social protection ministries for the Shamil Initiative, regional strategy development for WFP Asia-Pacific, and the integration of new capacity development approaches into Denmark's Strategic Sector Cooperation Guidelines — now used by Sector Counsellors globally.

Prior to independent practice, a five-year appointment as Senior Capacity Strengthening Advisor and Corporate Technical Lead at WFP HQ (Rome, 2014–2019) provided the institutional grounding for much of what followed. This role involved building WFP's approach to country capacity strengthening from the ground up — developing the organisation's first comprehensive conceptual framework, growing a team from one to six, and supporting 30+ country offices across five regions. This work directly shaped the 2022 WFP Corporate Capacity Strengthening Policy Update.

Earlier career experience across 15 years spans survey design, vulnerability and food security analysis, gender-responsive programme design, programme evaluation, and results-based management — with clients including UN Women (UNIFEM), UNV, WFP, and the UN Economic Commission for Africa. This period established the research and analytical rigour, thematic depth, and multi-country contextual knowledge that underpin all subsequent advisory work.

Thematic expertise covers institutional capacity development, social protection, food security and nutrition, humanitarian logistics and supply chain, disaster risk reduction, gender and intersectionality, anticipatory action, and migration management.

The country portfolio spans 35+ countries across five regions: Afghanistan, Angola, Bangladesh, Barbados, Bhutan, Burundi, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kenya, Laos, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Pakistan, Peru, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe — the majority through sustained in-country engagement combined with longer-term remote follow-up, rather than short-term visits. This global footprint is grounded in lived experience across multiple regions: having resided in Afghanistan (2004–2005), Kenya (2005–2014), Italy (2014–2018), and Sweden (2018–2023) before settling in Kent, England, the cross-cultural fluency this brings is both professional and personal.

Education:

An academic foundation that spans business, psychology, and research methods, combining formal postgraduate degrees with specialist professional training that directly underpins the applied practice.

A Bachelor of Arts in Psychology (Cum Laude) from Otterbein University, Ohio, USA (1992) provides a grounding in human behaviour, cognition, and social dynamics that informs all subsequent work — from gender analysis and vulnerability assessment to facilitative leadership and institutional capacity development. This was followed by a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the Open University, UK (2002), and a Master of Science in Cognitive Psychology, also from the Open University (2004), complemented by advanced coursework in Social Research Methods in following years.

Specialist professional training reinforces the formal degrees: Advanced Survey Sampling at the FAFO Institute, Norway (2003) deepened technical expertise in quantitative research design, while NLP Practitioner certification (Levels 1 & 2) and an NLP Business Applications Certificate from MetaConsulting, Italy (2002) contribute to the facilitative, people-centred approach brought to multi-stakeholder processes.

A member of the UK Evaluation Society since 2024.

Affiliations and Achievements:

De Bonis D. & Holmes A. (2023). The Preparedness Enabler’s Guide (PEG): Practical Do’s and Do Not’s along the path to sustainable localisation. Global Logistics Cluster (GLC), Rome, Italy.
Available: https://logcluster.org/en/document/preparedness-enablers-guide

Available for:

  • Consulting assignments
  • Job opportunities
  • Being headhunted – make me an offer

Years of Experience:

More than 20 years

Highest Qualification:

Masters

Languages:

English, French, Spanish, Italian

Nationality:

Italy