Katherine Bain

Location: Costa Rica/Canada

Katherine Bain (she/her) is a Senior Fellow of the Governance Action Hub at R4D. She plays a key role in shaping the program’s design, strategy, and partnership development, offering thought leadership and acting as a strategic advisor, with a particular focus on the Colombia portfolio. With over 30 years of experience in governance, innovation and political strategy in international development, her career began at the grassroots level, working with community organizations throughout Latin America, where she focused on participatory approaches to children’s and women’s rights. Over the years, Katherine has expanded her impact, partnering with local change leaders to address poverty, inequality, poor governance, weak service delivery, and urban violence across Latin America and Africa. She has held positions in multilateral organizations, managing portfolios of programs from field offices. Most recently she has worked with The Asia Foundation, the Natural Resource Governance Institute and the SOAS-ACE program at the University of London.

She is deeply committed to mobilizing and strategizing with grassroots groups to pursue structural change through politically savvy, holistic, and adaptive approaches. She is passionate about institutional innovation and systems thinking. Her work has increasingly focused on solving complex problems like the energy transition and corruption through systems-level approaches. Katherine is also an activist at heart, dedicating her voluntary efforts to democratic change and immigrant rights in Maryland, USA. Her published work explores the politics of policy reform, governance systems, and the potential for innovation within international development bureaucracies.

Outside of her career, she enjoys supporting women in politics, triathlons, and surfing.