Working across Africa, Diane has earned an international reputation for her collaborative and communicative leadership style, stakeholder smart she combines her Mediator qualifications in Stakeholder engagement, capacity Building and Leadership development. A well-known expert in the areas of African land issues.

Diane is widely acknowledged as an independent, experienced and innovative Africa country project leader. Her work in institutional development & training has seen her involved with Ministries in Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania/Zanzibar and Kenya and through the pan- African FIG Regional Capacity Development Network, working with Land professionals across twelve African countries.

A passionate ambassador of societal equitable access to land and resources, in 2012 Diane established ‘Leadership 4 Change’ dedicated to designing and facilitating participatory knowledge transfer programs to assist African professionals.

Aware that capacity development does not imply that there is no capacity in existence; her focuses is to retain and strengthen existing capacities of people and organisation to perform their tasks.

Importantly, Diane’s approach is a concept that sets soft skills of leadership with hard skills of technical development, relying on the overall context within which individuals, organisation and societies operate and interact. Participation is achieved by building confidence through peer knowledge i.e. Discover- design- deliver.

This means, the hard, technical skills include: explicit knowledge, tangible and visible capacities. The soft skills include: operational capacity with values and leadership including personal skills (negotiation, communication etc) and adaptive capacities to be self-effective and confidence to change management.

Diane’s belief is that the societal success lies in increasing the strength of its (land) institutions in its widest sense, and that policy and implementation requires the convergence of policy makers, civil society actors, professionals and researchers.

Accordingly Diane’s highly participatory capacity building approach is driven by evidence, drawing together peer lived experience and knowledge.

Project example: ARN leadership to achieve the SDGs. A series of 8 annual workshops in Africa focusing on leadership and the and professional role to implement the SDGs and Fit For Purpose Approaches to Land Administration (Rwanda).

An innovator in multi-disciplinary, technical and functional capacity development on land policy administration and management, Diane has built analytical and innovative capacities among professionals and translated research inputs for policy development and practice- having innovatively aligned professionals training curricula and organisational leadership short courses for knowledge and skills enhancement in a number of ways. Leveraging mechanisms (policy and tools) training courses on land and property rights/ sustainable land rights by aligning projects with broader development agendas e.g challenging deeply rooted power structures/ the continuum of land rights is operationalised especially to equality of rights/ Fit For Purpose/ highlighting results from gender justice approach to ensure gender issues are in its work and targeted.

Numerous innovative and participatory workshops designed and facilitated, from 2008 to present day; a particular ‘game-changer’ was the development introduction of the interactive ‘cabaret/ market place’ participatory mechanism into workshops now taken forward by GLTN. A full list of the range of activities is available on request, in summary.

•  Bespoke: e.g. National Lands Administrations:
•  Special interest groups on: Gender, Maritime & Ports, Land & the SDGs,
•  Workshops and seminars: e.g. L4C- the Art of leadership and science of land administration and management
•  Train the trainers e.g. Indonesia, Kenya
•  Regional groups: e.g. African Regional Network: Capacity of individuals, which
•  Strategic Methodologies: Futures, Scenario Planning
•  Strategy Planning for SME’s.

Diane’s aim is to articulate the broad social issues through the eyes of everyday life and connect that issue to the focus of the social business. Renowned at clearly explaining the problem by developing a tool and/ or simply articulated, to resolve part of the larger issue.

Encouraged by her international network, Diane is set to enter the realm of blogging in 2019 having in the past been active on topical issues including:

• Global trends on issues including: MDGs, SDGs, Gender, Global land agenda, Cities SDG11, Smart Cities, Future of the land professional, peri- urban development and engagement with traditional leaders
• To Gender Awareness. Promote and protect women’s land tenure security supporting initiatives to documented land rights to be women though legislative and other mechanisms
• To Building partnerships  - non state actors will be more effective if they work in partnerships with government, and building strategic partnerships with international stakeholders on behalf of International NGO
• To building capacity of land professionals to talk to government need to give them a professional framework to influence policy frameworks
• To the Interrelationship of land and water governance