DR EDWINA THOMPSON

DIRECTOR

Edwina or 'Ween' is a leading expert in threat finance and is committed to helping decision-makers think differently and act decisively in the face of seemingly wicked problems. She draws on a diverse career as a humanitarian worker, independent expert and investigative researcher with aid organisations, governments, banks, telecommunications companies and the military in complex environments – such as Afghanistan, DRC, Pakistan, Lebanon, Papua New Guinea, Somalia, Sudan and Sri Lanka. Much of her work is done at the intersections between the public, private and non-profit sectors. She designed TEAMWIN Decision-Navigator, an online tool to help different agencies resolve humanitarian dilemmas, and delivered a TEDx talk on lessons from the war on terror, voted by YouTube to be one of the 'Favourites' for 2015, based partly on her work as a counter-terrorism finance investigator.

 

Following frontline research, Oxford University Press published her seminal book Trust is the Coin of the Realm: Lessons from the Money Men in Afghanistan detailing the underground banking system across the Islamic world. She continues to work on related challenges in Syria, and advises several Fintech companies in their growth strategies for emerging and frontier markets.