Harpinder (Pin) Collacott is the Executive Director of Development Initiatives (DI), an international consultancy and not-for-profit providing data-driven analysis to support poverty eradication. DI provides services to governments, philanthropic organisations, UN and other multilateral organisations such as the World Bank, as well as working with large international NGOs such as Save the Children, World Vision and others. DI seeks to improve the allocation of financing to reach the poorest people and ensure poverty is eradicated in our lifetime. It has offices in UK, Kenya, Uganda and the US.
Harpinder speaks at global meetings on the importance of better data and evidence to inform decisions about investing finance. She calls for improvements in transparency and accessibility of information and represents DI on many global initiatives, such as IATI. Harpinder recently spoke on the opening panel of the World Data Forum, at the UN’s Financing for Development Conference, as well as global meetings on humanitarian assistance.
A graduate of Cambridge and LSE, Harpinder has held many roles and worked in the public, private and charitable sectors across the world. For instance, Harpinder worked for the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone as the Chief Prosecutor’s Political Advisor, securing the arrest of Liberian President Charles Taylor in March 2006. She has worked for think tanks in the US, such as the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, as well as for Nick Clegg as an MEP in the European Parliament and Edward Davey as MP in the House of Commons.
Harpinder spoke at the House of Commons on the data gaps that exist on some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society and how they are holding back government and donor efforts to eradicate poverty. Disaggregated, geo-coded data on people – data that counts everyone – is essential to better target people with policies and resources that can lift them out of poverty and also to monitor their progress. Development Initiatives works with partners around the world to support improvements in data, alongside working with the existing data to make the invisible visible and ensure no one is left behind.