GIF is committed to championing open innovation – the idea that great ideas can come from anywhere. This means we’re open to solutions that address any development challenge, so long as the core beneficiaries are those living on under $2 a day.
To help us advance our open innovation agenda, GIF Investment Director Malcolm Spence will champion open innovation at GIF, coordinate our work internally, and represent GIF externally with key strategic partners.
Within the investment team, Malcolm works on sourcing, evaluating and managing investments with a public sector pathway to scale.
Malcolm said: “GIF’s open window is a vital part of our organisational DNA, ensuring GIF is open to ideas from across the world and that our funding is accessible to those innovators who best understand the markets in which they work. It is also a fantastic tool for encountering innovations which challenge our assumptions and inform our thinking about where we can make the biggest difference. I am looking forward to working with colleagues, applicants and partners to ensure that the window can best reflect the continued evolution of our own thinking at GIF and be more effective in is surfacing the innovations which interest us most.”
Before joining GIF last year Malcolm was Head of Learning and Strategy at Comic Relief, where he established new portfolio monitoring and learning frameworks for a portfolio of more than a thousand live grants; and lead reforms to grant making processes, risk management protocols, and decision making structures. Malcolm also established Redshed, Comic Relief’s social investment function, and sat on Red Nose Day USA’s Grants Committee.
With a background in development economics, Malcolm was previously an ODI Fellow with the Ministry of East African Community Affairs in Uganda; and a consultant focusing on intra-African trade and regional integration with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in Ethiopia. He is a co-founder and trustee of On Call Africa, a rural health system strengthening initiative in Zambia.
You can direct any open innovation-related queries to our general enquiries mailbox apply@globalinnovation.fund
Connect with us: