The Sector Debrief
The Sector Debrief is a podcast about the humanitarian and development sector. Hosts Ali Al Mokdad, Kim Kucinskas, and Thomas Jepson Lay have honest, unscripted conversations with people working in the field. They discuss politics, funding, power, localization, pressure, and the future of crisis response. The show aims to reveal the side of the sector that rarely appears in public.
Episodes
E12: Acting, or Acting?
"Are you actually comfortable with change, or are you just familiar with running change processes?"Kim Kucinskas comes back from three conferences in two weeks, the UNGA side events in New York, the WINGS Forum in Montreal and the InterAction annual conference in Washington, with a notebook full of the same words: trust, solidarity, collaboration, humility. One line from the WINGS openin
E11: The Joy of Collaboration Over Control
"Not having the control is actually quite liberating."In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad are joined by Susan le Jeune d'Allegeershecque, Secretary General of St John International, to talk about leadership and localisation inside an organisation that has been locally rooted from the start, with a long investment in local leadership. Today it is a fed
E10: Inside the Impact Alliance
"We are practising our way into what the future will look like."In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad are joined by Vanessa Self, Project Director of the Impact Alliance, the collaboration between CARE, Mercy Corps, and Save the Children, created when three CEOs, Michelle Nunn, Tjada D'Oyen McKenna, and Janti Soeripto, came together aiming for deeper collaboration an
E9: What Do You Tell the Next Generation?
"As educators, we need to start thinking about what we're educating people on."In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad work through a question all three keep getting asked. What do you tell a student, an emerging leader, or a colleague who just lost their job, about a career in humanitarian and development work, when the old pathway into it no longer exis
E8: Rethinking Risk Management in the Humanitarian and Development Sector
In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad are joined by Sabrina M. Segal, Director of The Risk Collaborative, who has spent years working on how organisations in the humanitarian and development sector actually think about risk. Her argument: risk is not compliance. It is the effect of uncertainty on objectives, and most of the sector has been doing it backwards, startin
E7: Donations, Collaboration, and AI in the Room
"This is not just a funding problem. It is a social contract problem."A mother and two children spend their Sunday knocking on doors, collecting donations for an NGO. Ali's brain goes straight to overhead costs and financial flows. Then he stops. What he is actually watching is people practicing values, not talking about them. Showing their children what solidarity looks like. Asking
E6: The Sector Is Changing. How Do You Make Sense Of It?
“This is not just a funding problem. It's a social contract problem." Kim Kucinskas came back from a month on the road and needed to think out loud. This episode is that conversation.By using Kim’s experiences at a curated gathering of bridge builders and network weavers in Buenos Aires, and the Skoll World Forum in Oxford as real examples, Ali Al Mokdad, Kim Kucinskas, and Thomas Jepson-Lay work
E5: Who Are You in the Room, Identity vs Positionality, and Leadership in Times of Disruption
What does it mean to truly know who you are — and how you show up — in the spaces you occupy?In Episode 5 of The Sector Debrief, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad are joined by Aisha Tambajang, a humanitarian and development leader who has navigated identity, race, positionality, and belonging across The Gambia, Denmark, and the UK.The conversation moves between the deeply person
E4: The CEO Perspective, Urgent Patience, and Why Idealism Is Not Naivety
In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad are joined bySofia Sprechmann Sineiro, a humanitarian leader who spent three decades inside the sector, from volunteering to becoming Secretary General of CARE International. One of the leading voices for locally led development and one of the leaders of the Pledge for Change, her journey took her across the globe, leading throug
E3: Humanitarian Leadership Under Pressure, Identity vs Strategy, and What Comes Next
In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad explore what it means to lead in a humanitarian system under pressure. The conversation moves between personal reflection and system-level questions, touching on identity versus strategy, survival versus imagination, and the growing gap between grassroots innovation and large institutional responses.Ali Al Mokdad reflects on a re
E2: What does sector mean, leadership tension, and change
In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad explore what the word sector actually means, responding to feedback from the first episode, and whether it still reflects the complexity of the work or the people inside it. The conversation moves into humanitarian diplomacy, rising leadership tension, and growing reputational pressure across the ecosystem. They reflect on system
E1: What this space is about, leadership and reflections
This first episode sets the tone for the series. Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad talk about what this space is about, share reflections on leadership, and discuss the habits and practices they use to reflect and think.
