Chioma Eze

Chioma's entry into development work began with a single question that has never fully left her: why do so many well-resourced, well-intentioned interventions leave communities no better off than they found them? Pursuing that question has taken her across West Africa and the UK, through roles in international NGOs, government policy, social enterprise, and community organising. She holds a Masters in Development Studies from SOAS University of London and a certification in Impact Evaluation from the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). She is also a trained facilitator in Asset-Based Community Development and has delivered the methodology to practitioners in eleven countries. What distinguishes Chioma's approach is her insistence that community members are never objects of change but agents of it. She brings this conviction into her ReTAIE work with equal force — believing that the same respect for agency that drives effective community development is what separates genuine personal impact from performance of impact. She is rigorous, warm, politically clear-eyed, and deeply practical.

The work is not about what you want to change. It is about what the people affected by the change want for themselves.

— Chioma Eze