For nearly 6 years, I held the responsibility of leading the Innovation for Change MENA Hub – a role I was honored to serve, nurture, and scale. Reflecting on Hub’s journey and my experience in navigating the complexity that comes with the role, I will always remain humbled by the trust that the I4C network, my colleagues and the overall community had put in me to co-lead the Hub and becoming one of its co-architects. I share below some key ingredients that I found helpful in my leadership journey with the Hub:
- Ethical, intellectual, strategic, and technical leadership:leading emerging non-profit entities and new operating governance models requires immense building, strategizing, risk-taking, failing, and learning. Working with amazing minds and colleagues, we moved the Hub from early co-design phases to maturity, with a consolidated governance structure centered on a diverse community, an independent, thematically knowledgeable team responsible for program success, a unique regional strategy, a streamlined membership approach, and a solid base of partners and donors who trusted in the Hub’s model and vision. This often meant I had to reinvent my approach, adapt to contextual challenges, update my knowledge and capacity at different levels and issues, consult knowledgeable colleagues for advice, and consistently reflect to ensure we were on the right path. Needless to say, none of this would matter without inspiration and a solid framework of personal, collective, and organizational ethics. I am grateful for the intellectual growth and maturity that the community and role brought to my leadership style as it is both individual and collective.
- Working competently with intentionality and authenticity: Leading an organization’s growth and ensuring team well-being within a challenging global and regional context require some key guiding principles to help shield the team and organization in the journey. The main qualities I found necessary to my work were: 1) Competence (knowing what you’re doing), 2) Intentionality (a genuine commitment to the work and its challenges), and 3) Authenticity (showing up honestly and creating genuine connections).
- Partnership management: In civic space-related work, no solid achievement happens without partnership and collaboration. This spans from the smallest scale service providers to the institutional partners and donors supporting the Hub’s growth journey. In managing these partnerships, I learned the importance of being strategic, critical, wise and patient to navigate system change, align mutual organizational interests and shared values.
- Local leadership: Having worked in multiple regional programs, including the I4C MENA Hub, I noticed that local partners often shy away from pushing back with donors, fearing loss of funding or appearing irrelevant. It is a bit more nuanced than what I depicted here but I believe that this pattern harms local leadership, diminishes the lived experiences of local communities, and limits potential. I learned that accountability is a two-way street; and nonprofits owe it to themselves to provide honest, constructive feedback. This is the only way to hold donors accountable to their commitments to localization, flexibility, and local leadership, and engaging real change in attitudes and frameworks. Contrary to popular belief, being reasonably vocal and pushing back, strengthens partnerships and often gets results.
These were just some highlights. I learned multiple lessons from this experience and I hope to get the opportunity to document my leadership journey in its entirety and complexity.
I hold my journey with the Innovation for Change Global and MENA networks in the highest regard. The I4C network, its Hubs, and teams are truly distinctive—genuine, knowledgeable, and full of potential to make an even greater impact globally and regionally. I’ve seen this firsthand; it’s far from a typical development project. I wish the MENA Hub and the global network every success in reaching their future milestones and am always proud to be part of this community. You can check out their mission and strategies below:
Global Network Strategy: https://shorturl.at/Nkkx5
MENA Hub Regional Strategy: https://shorturl.at/l8ZP7
My deep gratitude to everyone who walked this journey with me,
Some photos from the journey:
