Naomi Yehdego is an advocacy and policy specialist with over five years of experience in international development and humanitarian sectors. She is currently the External Engagement and Advocacy Advisor at Start Network, leading initiatives on locally led humanitarian action and collective innovation. Previously, she convened over 300 leaders at the 2024 Commonwealth People’s Forum, influencing global policy on climate finance, health justice, and advancing conversation on reparative justice.
Her expertise includes campaigning, stakeholder engagement, and policy research focused on decolonising aid and shifting power to local actors. She worked at Bond on financial reform and at the Advocacy Team on UK aid in fragile states and DEI practices, organising high-profile advocacy events. Naomi began her career at Nathan Associates, a global economic consulting firm, supporting donor programmes across Africa and Asia. She co-chaired the British Expertise International working group, which addressed inequitable donor practices and promoted power-shifting to local actors. Naomi previously served on the REDI Collective Advisory Board, advancing racial equity in the UK international development sector.
She holds an undergraduate degree in Economics and International Development from the University of Sussex and a Master’s in Race, Media and Social Justice from Goldsmiths, where her thesis examined barriers to locally led development in the UK development sector through postcolonial and decolonial perspectives.
Posts
Is an equitable, decolonised approach to global development possible?
From its inception, UK international development has been driven by vested economic interests. Is this why we are still struggling to achieve locally led development? New blog from Naomi Yehdego.