Phil Vernon

Phil Vernon has been engaged in development, humanitarian and peacebuilding work since 1985. He has worked in over a dozen African countries and lived for several years each in Sudan, Lesotho, Rwanda, Mali, Ghana and Uganda. He returned to his native UK in 2004 and since then has been Director of Programmes at International Alert, a peacebuilding organisation. In 2010 he was the lead writer of Working with the Grain to Change the Grain: Looking Beyond the Millennium Development Goals, a critique of overseas development aid which proposes an alternative model of support to people in poor and fragile contexts. He was a trustee of the charity Build Africa from 2005-2012, and has been a member of mining company BHP Billiton’s Forum for Corporate Responsibility since 2010. He has a MSc in Environmental Forestry, lives in West Kent and enjoys cross-country running. This is his personal blog.