Purpose
Purpose & Ideas (P&I) is committed to helping identify and activate the potential that exists in people and in groups to address the challenges they face and better serve their purpose. We create spaces and facilitate processes that awaken collective intelligence. By collaborating with our partners, and based on systemic approaches, we co-create ideas and actions to address complex and wicked problems.
P&I was born in 2012 as Politics & Ideas, a joint initiative of researchers and practitioners to co-produce and share innovative knowledge and support evidence-informed public policies in developing countries. Based on what we learned by working with diverse stakeholders in the evidence and policy ecosystem we have decided to expand our focus to complement research and knowledge with other ways to generate ideas that can inspire new actions for the good of all.
Our organisation is registered in Ireland. Our members are based in Dublin (Ireland), Buenos Aires (Argentina), and Florida (United States).
Team
Our team is made up of communicators, political scientists, facilitators, evaluators, and researchers. We have worked at CSOs, think tanks, international organisations, government agencies, and universities. Our diverse backgrounds enrich our approach and strengthen our service. We are a small core team but we see P&I as a larger network of organisations and people that are increasingly interested in finding co-creative ways to address shared challenges.
Clara Richards
Associate
Clara has more than ten years of experience in international development with a focus on improving the link between research and policy in the NGO and public sectors. Besides contributing to Politics & ideas, she leads INASP’s work on evidence informed policy making. Her interests include understanding the factors that enable organisational change, introducing innovation in policy-making and supporting those who are interested in improving policy design and learning from the process. Clara has worked with public agencies, think tanks and networks in Latin America and Africa. She was also the Director of the DfID BCURE multi-country programme. Clara worked with the RAPID (Research and Policy in Development) team at ODI (Overseas Development Institute) coordinating the Evidence Based in Development Network (EBPDN) from 2011. Prior to this, she spent more than five years at CIPPEC, a think tank in Argentina, developing the policy influence capacities of Latin American think tanks and coordinating the Latin American chapter of EBDN. Clara has a BA in international relations and a MA in international studies.
Leandro Echt
Associate
Political scientist with over 12 years of experience in the public policy field focused on supporting the use of evidence in decision making and facilitating multi-stakeholder processes, with focus on equity and inclusion. He works with think tanks, international organisations, NGOs and government agencies, through capacity building, mentoring, research and consultancy projects including program evaluations and organisational assessments. He has worked in South America, Central America and the Caribbean, West Africa, Southern Africa, South East Asia and the Pacific, and South Asia. He is also Research Associate at On Think Tanks and chair of the International Support Group. He holds an MA in Public Policies and Development Management (Georgetown University and Universidad de San Martín), a Specialisation in Public Policy and Gender Justice (Latin American Council of Social Sciences), a Diploma on Evaluation of Public Policies (Universidad de San Martín), and a BA in Political Science (Universidad de Buenos Aires). He is Argentinean, currently based in Florida, United States.
Vanesa Weyrauch
Co-founder and Associate
Vanesa is the co-founder of Politics & Ideas and Associate researcher of the Center for the Implementation of Public Policies Promoting Equity and Growth (CIPPEC) in Argentina. She has worked in the field of policy and research for the last 12 years, especially with Latin American think tanks and policymakers, through knowledge generation, capacity building and mentorship. She has created an online platform to offer courses on policy influence planning, research communication and monitoring and assessment of policy influence, training regional organizations as well as organizations from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. Within this platform she also led the creation of an online course to help policymakers become better agents of change to promote the use of evidence in policy in Africa and Latin America. She has co-led a national initiative in Argentina together with a governmental agency to promote better relationships and articulation between the State and civil society. She is also an expert in evaluation and has worked with international organizations like Save the Children, IDB, GDN, OSI/TTF, DFID TTI/IDRC and others. In recent years she has specialised in innovative methods to facilitate the learning and design of future scenarios, such as Theory U. In 2017 he created and led the program “Integral Leaders for Global Challenges”, which aimed to support each young participant in their development as a leader and the group as a collective to co-design new forms of leadership.
Partners and networks
We have strategic partnerships with INASP (UK), Capability
(Finland) and Using evidence (Canada). We have worked together for a long time now. We are grateful to have found partners who share our spirit and working ethos: we complement each other, share opportunities and what we learn, and continuously nurture our relationships.
We hold safe spaces where we learn, create and sense future possibilities with a trusted group of friends: Circling and Coaching circles.
We have worked with and for: Global Development Network, International Development Research Centre/Think Tank Initiative, Open Society Foundations/Think Tank Fund, ILAIPP (Latin America), UNICEF, FAO, United Nations Evaluation Group, Rimisp (Chile), CIPPEC (Argentina), ASIES (Guatemala), Grupo FARO (Ecuador), PACKS-Africa, On Think Tanks, Ministry of Education (Trinidad & Tobago), Ministry of Modernization (Argentina), and many other international organisations, CSOs, think tanks and consultancy firms.
