Alexandra

Nastase

Head of the Technical Practices and Senior Adviser, Abt Britain

Alexandra Nastase is the Head of the Technical Practices, based in London. She has more than 15 years of experience in design, implementation, and evaluation of large reform and technical assistance programs to improve public sector performance. She has worked with leaders at all government levels on five continents.

Nastase has held leadership and senior advisory roles for multi-million technical assistance programs funded by World Bank, European Commission, World Food Programme, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Australian Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade, United Nations Development Program, and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO).

As part of the Abt Britain Executive, Nastase leads a diverse and high performing technical team that designs, tests, and applies innovative, evidence-based, and interdisciplinary approaches to development challenges for measurable, sustainable, and equitable impact. The International Technical Practice team covers health, equity, climate change, governance, economic growth, monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning.

In her role, she is also responsible for strategy and growth, working with and leading technical experts to ensure excellence in Abt’s programs and identify opportunities for technical innovations in strategic areas.

Before joining Abt, Nastase served as director of a small international development consultancy, Shift Initiative Consulting, where she was the governance team leader on projects with the World Food Programme and FCDO. She was a senior public sector governance specialist and team leader with Oxford Policy Management, leading operational, capability building, and thought leadership initiatives.

Nastase served as a senior governance specialist and as a policy advisor for the World Bank. She worked on high-level coordination and country strategies, focusing on public sector reform.

She started her career in the non-governmental sector working on foreign affairs and democratic governance. She was president and co-founder of the Romanian Centre for International Relations and Security Studies.

Expertise:

Policy development and coordination
Public sector management and innovation
Capacity development
Political economy analysis
Governance in health, climate change, and social sectors

Key Projects:

Team leader for developing a diagnostic toolkit on civic spaces for the United Kingdom FCDO (Global programme)
Team Leader for mobilizing global evidence and good practice for better implementation and measurement of capacity strengthening in World Food Programme (Global programme)
Team lead of the Institutional Reform Workstream, Sub-National Governance Programme 2 - United Kingdom FCDO (Pakistan)
Technical lead of the Governance Workstream and Senior Governance Advisor Bihar Technical Support Programme 2 - India Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (India)
Principal Advisor for developing a capacity assessment framework to consolidate the strategic management function of the general secretariat of the Romanian Government - World Bank (Romania)
Senior Governance Advisor for climate proofing growth and development in South Asia (Nepal, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan)

Publications:

Nastase A. et al (2021): Building strategic management function across the Romanian Government – a conceptual framework for capacity development, report for the World Bank
Nastase A. et al (2021) Building adaptative programmes for health system strengthening, report for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Nastase A, Rajan A, French B and Bhattacharya D. Technical assistance: a practical account of the challenges in design and implementation Gates Open Res 2021, 4:177 (https://doi.org/10.12688/gatesopenres.13205.2)
Nastase A, Rajan A, French B and Bhattacharya D. Towards reimagined technical assistance: the current policy options and opportunities for change Gates Open Res 2021, 4:180 (https://doi.org/10.12688/gatesopenres.13204.2)