Ticora Jones: The Federal Government’s Scientist for
Global Development
By Anh-Thi Le
Dr. Ticora V. Jones is division chief
for the Higher Education Solutions
Network (HESN) within USAID’s Global
Development Lab. Established in 2012,
the Higher Education Solutions Network
harnesses the ingenuity and worldclass expertise available at universities
to develop innovative solutions to global
development challenges. DIL recently
spoke with Dr. Jones to gather her views
on the role of universities in development,
working in the public sector, and diversity
in social impact.
It has been three years since USAID
launched the Higher Education Solutions
Network (HESN). What have you learned
from HESN and how can USAID best
work with universities to further global
development?
When we first launched HESN, we were
excited that universities were already
playing innovative and novel roles in
international development. For example,
we knew about faculty and researchers
creating sensors to monitor effectiveness
and use of technologies in global
development, such as those University of
Portland’s at SWEETLab, and we believed
that universities were creating innovations
that could be radically transformative if
they had additional support and partners.
Our challenge was to see how university
innovations could be made more visible in
international development and beyond the
immediate academic community.
We’ve learned that HESN can play a
role in facilitating connections between
emerging university-based innovations
and practitioners. Universities are unique
places where individuals are encouraged
and have the opportunity to explore,
evolve, and iterate. This drive, coupled with
a strong need from NGOs, development
organizations, and implementers to have
impact, has the potential for creating
many pathways to sustainable socioeconomic progress.
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We’ve also learned that in facilitating
partnerships and bridging the ingenuity
of universities with on-the-ground
implementation, communication and
relationship building are crucial. Creating
a bridge between universities and other
actors, be they NGOs or community or
government organizations,
requires
ever-expanding relationship building to
introduce new concepts, thoughts, and
ideas. We’ve gained valuable lessons from
development projects being facilitated by
universities in regard to how a university
and its partners establish a project
and transmit what they’ve learned. In a
sense, we have moved beyond the notion
of seeing how impactful an innovation is
to think