Rita Bhatia |

Rita Bhatia comes with over twenty years of experience in managing public health and nutrition programmes. She has worked with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), UN agencies dedicated to protection, public health, food security and nutrition, education of children and HIV and AIDS. Her career emphasis has been on conceptualization, planning, management and evaluation of programmes with result based goals and inter-agency collaboration and capacity development.

Rita has worked with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (1986-2000), heading the Nutrition unit based in Geneva and in the Horn of Africa. She was involved in most major emergencies during the 90s and involved in some of the most important developments in the emergency food and nutrition sector during this period. Rita has also worked for the World Food Programme in Rome in 2000 in the Strategy and Policy Division and later in the Regional Bureau in Asia. Rita has provided leadership in public nutrition with focus on developing policies and strategies, fostering inter-agency collaboration, providing technical support, undertaking training and workshops, leading food security and nutrition assessment and monitoring and evaluating programmes through extensive field visits. With WFP, Rita managed several nutrition emergencies, including Darfur, North Korea, Asia Tsunami, Bangladesh, Pakistan and conflict operations in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.

Rita frequently acts as a resource person in many international training and workshops in public health nutrition. Rita has co-authored and published several articles in public health and nutrition.

John Campbell |

John Campbell is a former career soldier who has spent over thirty years in the military and took part in several wars and operations throughout which he gained his expertise in personal protection and safe working procedures in hostile areas. He has gained this in urban, jungle and desert environments involving terrorists, insurgents, UN peace keeping and conventional conflicts. Following his military service he joined UNHCR and was employed as a head of field office during the Serb-Croat War, a security advisor in Africa, Somalia, Kenya and Rwanda (and others) before moving to Kosovo where he supported all UN agencies and the NGO community from1998-2000. He was then redeployed to become the UNHCR security advisor based in Jakarta covering the Asia-Pacific region with primary focus in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Indonesia. John has also been a regional training officer based in Tokyo addressing the needs of the UN and NGO community.

His forte is training humanitarian staff to operate safely in dangerous areas. He specialises in mines risk education, hostage survival, counter-terrorism and liaison with the military and insurgents. He is now in semi-retirement alternating between the United Kingdom and Malaysia in the capacity of an on-call security trainer/advisor to NGOs. He has a masters degree in strategic studies (terrorism and insurgencies).

Greg Garbinsky |

Gregory Garbinsky has over 34 years of international development and disaster experience, working with and for the US Government, NGO’s and the United Nations including extensive experience conducting training programs and workshops. He managed and supervised the Africa Emergency Operations Desk for FAO-Rome from 2003-2007, overseeing a $US 120 million portfolio of agriculture emergency and rehabilitation projects in 22 countries in Africa. In 2007-2008, Greg led the FAO Crisis Management Center for Animal Health, developing procedures and protocols and deploying rapid response teams for response to avian flu, Rift Valley fever and other animal health diseases. Greg worked with the USAID Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) from 1991 – 2003, where he led the Disaster Assistance Support Program, an international program of the USDA Forest Service. During this period, he developed and conducted disaster response team trainings, field operations guides, after-action workshops and deployed technical disaster specialists to international humanitarian emergencies. Greg has participated in numerous disasters around the globe, including India (Gujarat Earthquake, 2001); Kosovo (Refugee/Displaced Persons, 1999); DR Congo (Rwanda Refugee Crisis, 1994); West Africa (Togo Refugees, 1993); Chad (Desert Locust Response, 1988). Prior to this period, Greg worked in USDA’s Office of International Cooperation and Development managing a diverse portfolio of international agricultural, natural resources and disaster programs funded by USAID, World Bank, FAO and other donors. Greg is a former Peace Corps Volunteer (Burkina Faso ’77 – ’79) and has worked in over 30 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America.

Barbara Howald |

Barbara Howald has over 30 years of international development and emergency management training experience, working with the US government, United Nations, World Bank, NGOs and foundations. She was the head of training in USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance from 2000 to 2006. She has analyzed performance issues, designed, delivered and evaluated training, and helped teams work strategically and professionally in disaster assistance, NGO development, and small enterprise development in over 30 countries. She has evaluated the impacts and functioning of programs and projects, facilitated the use of participatory evaluation methods by project staffs, and conducted lessons learned workshops. She was responsible for field teams providing services in enterprise development and education/training development to USAID offices throughout the world. Barbara’s curriculum development experience includes: post-conflict needs assessment, a variety of disaster response/mitigation issues, democratic governance, land use planning, deliberative democracy, train-the-trainers, strategic planning for non-profits, business and financial management, lending program management, grant management, gender in development, training management. Barbara is fluent in French.

Larry Jagan |

Larry Jagan is a freelance reporter, analyst, media consultant, and trainer. Larry has participated in InterWorks’ trainings over the past 4 years as an expert resource and trainer in media interviewing components of integrated humanitarian field skills training simulations for the UNHCR eCentre. Larry offers training for journalists as well as anyone interested in managing their relations with media or improving their skills in interacting with the media in humanitarian environments.

Larry is the consummate trainer/practitioner. He is both an active and publishing journalist as well as a seasoned trainer/advisor in media matters. He has been the News and Current Affairs Editor for Asia and the Pacific at the BBC World Service as well as the Asia Editor (News and current affairs) at Radio Netherlands.
He previously worked in the nonprofit media production field for 12 years from 1991– 2003, as well as being an Editor of “Inside Asia” for 3 years from 1984–1986 in London, United Kingdom.

Larry also has extensive publications to his credit ranging from current news stories, to in-depth analysis and reports from the Asia region. A recent example is his Report of the Fifth Asia-Pacific Urban Forum for UNESCAP published in January 2012 with co-author Ai Chun Yeng. The fifth Asia-Pacific Urban Forum (APUF-5) was held in Bangkok, Thailand from 20-25 June 2011. It was organized by ESCAP in conjunction with more than 30 partner organizations within and outside the United Nations system. More than 900 participants attended the Forum, including ministers, mayors and other government officials, representatives from academia, the private sector, and civil society.
His university degree is from Monash University where he earned the B.A. (with Honors) Dip. Ed M. Ed, History, Economics and Sociology of Education.

Jeffrey Klenk |

Jeffrey S. Klenk has over two decades of experience in emergency operations, disaster management learning programme design, and disaster preparedness consulting. He has managed food emergency responses in West Africa, and led disaster assessment teams throughout Africa, the Caribbean, and the Caucausus, He has worked with government, NGO and UN agencies in more than 50 countries across five continents. In recent years, he has specialized in emergency food security assessment (EFSA), designing and piloting a global EFSA learning programme for the UN World Food Programme and its partners. Previously, Mr. Klenk managed emergency operations for Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in Africa and served as Coordinator of the CRS Headquarters Disaster Response Team. He also directed the CRS Headquarters Office of Information Systems where he managed over 30 staff and consultants working on the development of financial and project management system software. After completion of a graduate degree at Columbia University in New York, Mr. Klenk worked as an Associate Editor with the Financial Times of London Business Publications. He is fluent in English and French.

Sheila Reed |

Sheila Reed has over 20 years of experience in disaster risk reduction, emergency management and capacity development. She specializes in evaluation of emergency and development programs using a highly participatory approach that promotes utilization of recommendations. In 2005 – 06, she acted in team leadership positions to evaluate organizational responses to the Indian Ocean tsunami for CARE, World Vision and UNICEF. She evaluated programs in, among others, mine action, shelter, flood disaster preparedness, institutional and legislative systems for disaster management, humanitarian responses to complex emergencies and hurricane response. She has also conducted capacity assessments for CARE, UNDP, and GTZ. Sheila has written extensively on hazard mitigation, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and migration management and has developed training materials and workshops for Save the Children UK, UNDP, UNHCR, IOM, the World Bank, the War Torn Societies Project International and ALNAP, among others.

Colleen Ruru |

Colleen has enjoyed an adventurous career serving in the New Zealand Army, the United Nations and leading international organisations, all of which gives her a strong portfolio of skills and qualifications, with particular expertise in training, security and civil military coordination. As an army officer, she’s had operational service in Egypt, Bougainville and East Timor. She’s also worked internationally in many countries, including Lebanon, Zimbabwe, Iraq, and Afghanistan. She has served a number of shorter term deployments with various United Nations (UN) agencies – the UN Joint Logistics Centre and UN World Food Programme as part of the Indian Ocean tsunami response (Indonesia), Logistics Officer with the UN Human Rights ‘start up’ programme in Nepal, and the UN Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) conducting a number of civil-military coordination training courses in Philippines, Vietnam and Vanuatu.

For the past 7 years Colleen has been conducting scenario based training exercises and courses with foreign militaries in Mongolia, Indonesia, Nepal, India, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Thailand and Cambodia. She has also participated in various training events in the United States of America. Colleen is actively involved with training for the New Zealand Red Cross (NZRC) and was part of the NZRC team responding to the Christchurch earthquake in 2011. She also deployed as a logistics officer during Cyclone Evan in Samoa 2013.

Colleen has a personal interest in training and development; and in all matters related to domestic and international security.

Chris Talbot |

Chris Talbot is an experienced education in emergencies consultant and a co-founder of the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) and of the Global Coalition for Protecting Education from Attack (GCPEA). Chris taught in Australian and French high schools for 17 years and also worked in curriculum development and teacher training, focusing on education for peace, human rights, environmental and development education. From 1993-2002, Chris worked for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), based in Geneva. From 2000-2002, he was UNHCR’s Senior Education Officer, responsible for technical support and policy advice to the staff of UNHCR and its implementing partners, on the education of refugees worldwide. Between 2002 and 2008 he worked at UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning, where he was responsible for a programme on Education in Conflict, Emergencies, Reconstruction and Fragile States. He documented case studies on these themes and developed a Guidebook for Planning Education in Emergencies and Reconstruction. In 2008-09, he established and led the UNESCO Section for Education in Post-Conflict and Post-Disaster Situations. In 2010, Mr Talbot was CEO of Education Above All (EAA), a Qatar-based policy research and advocacy organization, which aims to protect, support and promote the right to education in areas affected or threatened by crisis, conflicts and war. Since early 2011, Mr. Talbot has been a consultant, specializing in education in emergencies, working for agencies such as UNICEF, UNHCR and the CfBT Education Trust.

Alan Vernon |

During an international career of over thirty-five years with UNHCR and Non-Governmental Organizations, Alan Vernon has extensive managerial, organizational development and training experience with particular strengths in strategic planning, program development and organizational design.

With UNHCR, he held a variety of senior management positions including Country Representative and Director of Organizational Development and Management. He has also led and played a key role in change management processes for UNHCR including strengthening of the organization’s results-based management system and development of the organization’s program management software, Focus.

Alan’s emergency management experience includes leading UNHCR’s emergency response to the Tsunami Disaster in Aceh, Indonesia. Alan brings specialist skills and competence in change management, organizational development and training. He developed training programs in emergency team leadership on behalf of the Interagency Standing Committee as well as program management training for UNHCR. As a skilled facilitator and writer, he has successfully completed a wide range of internal consulting assignments including strategic plans, program and staffing reviews, evaluations and assessments.

Alan has done post-graduate study in urban design and planning at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University and holds a master’s degree from Temple University in Philadelphia. Most recently, he has served as Project Lead for UNHCR’s Connectivity for Refugees Program. Alan is a native speaker of English and speaks Thai and basic French.