About me

I work at the intersection of public policy, innovation, and digital transformation, and I have had the good fortune to have had a varied career so far, ranging from private secretary to the Prime Minister to building a global data and technology business supporting governments to deliver digital services. I have been a senior civil servant leading large teams and managing huge budgets and I have been CEO of agile, fast-growing private sector organisations. I have established and led an economics think-tank, and I’ve been an economics professor of practice. In all these roles I have achieved real-world change by building and leading diverse teams with a commitment to achieving impact and a culture of kindness. Here are some things I am especially proud of:

• I led the team which developed the first Advance Market Commitment (a term I coined to describe the first practical implementation of Michael Kremer‘s idea), which has saved more than 20 million lives and which was later used to accelerate the Covid vaccines.
• I led Precision Development from research projects into a rapidly-growing global data science and tech organisation supporting digital transformation of services for smallholder farmers which now reach more farmers than any other agricultural service in the world. I built a world-class, diverse leadership team, including putting in place new leadership to take over from me.
• I have led teams that developed and implemented many other innovative programmes with impact at scale such as Development Impact Bonds, Humanitarian Cash Transfers, the International Aid Transparency Initiative, and Disaster Insurance Partnerships.
• I established and led the Center for Global Development in Europe, a successful global economics policy think tank.
• Working for South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, I helped develop the South African budget system, pioneering a new approach to medium term budgeting and fiscal decentralisation.
• As an early pioneer of podcasting, I hosted (and produced and edited) Development Drums, an in-depth discussion of development economics, which I think has been downloaded millions of times
• I started the online pledge never to serve on an all male panel.
• As a junior Treasury economist, I built the UK government’s first website – as a result of which the UK was the first country in the world to publish its budget online. I also pioneered the use of blogs, podcasts and social media by the public sector, helped establish the UK office of the e-envoy, and later ran the information division of a major government department.
• I have written a book about running; and represented my country, for my age group, in the world championships for standard distance triathlon, and competed in the Ironman 70.3 World Championships.

Owen’s CV