Introducing New Members of WeRobotics' Board of Directors

When we founded WeRobotics in 2015, we needed a Board with strong credentials in robotics and in some of the key sectors that could benefit from robotics. This Board’s expertise enabled us to write the first foundational chapters of the WeRobotics story. We are truly grateful for their guidance and trust over the years. Thanks to their support, we have now reached the next chapter of our story. This next chapter is the very reason we founded WeRobotics in the first place: to shift power with local experts across all sectors and technologies and thereby drive much-needed systems change. In June 2020, our current Board wholeheartedly agreed that writing this new chapter requires a new Board of Directors.

We are delighted to announce that Arbie Baguios, Huguette Diakabana, Célestin Monga, and Chrisanta Muli will join the Board of Directors on January 1, 2021. 

We’re thrilled to introduce you to each of them now: 

Arbie Baguios

Arbie is a humanitarian and development professional, and founder of Aid Re-imagined, an initiative that helps usher the evolution of aid towards effectiveness and justice through an interdisciplinary lens – drawing from cutting-edge thinking in development studies, anthropology, sociology, economics, philosophy and management, among others. Having worked for global organizations including ActionAid, Save the Children, the Red Cross and UNICEF, Arbie has experience in humanitarian response, program management, policy, strategy, and research. Originally from the Philippines, Arbie is a graduate of the London School of Economics and Ateneo de Manila University. Arbie has a specific interest in evidence-based policy, complexity and systems thinking, and decolonizing development and humanitarian aid.

Huguette Diakabana

Huguette is a system-level change agent with a history of working with international organizations and governments. She is passionate about fostering collaboration and expanding access to valuable and impactful knowledge to help achieve meaningful progress in sub-Saharan Africa. Her experiences include developing and implementing context-appropriate technology-based solutions in education, mining, environment, agriculture, and in recent years in digital health in over 20 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Huguette also mentors students and professionals interested in collaboration and leveraging appropriate, sustainable technologies to make a difference in their communities. She currently conducts Digital Health policy and strategy development and data-driven decision-making workshops.

Dr. Célestin Monga

Célestin currently teaches public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He is also a Faculty Associate at the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University, and Fellow at the Harvard University Center for African Studies. A part-time professor of economics at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Dr. Monga previously served as Managing Director at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Senior Economic Adviser at the World Bank Group, and Vice-President and Chief Economist of the African Development Bank Group. His works include The Oxford Handbook of Structural Transformation (2019), Beating the Odds: Jump-Starting Developing Countries (Princeton University Press, 2017), the two-volume Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics (2015), all with Justin Lin; and Nihilism and Negritude: Ways of Living in Africa (Harvard University Press, 2016).

Dr. Chrisanta Muli 

Chrisanta is an impact-driven Gender Justice & Equality Specialist with +15 years’ experience leading and facilitating complex participatory action research and evaluations across diverse global cultural contexts in Australia, Asia, Africa, the UK, and the Pacific. Her global experience includes senior roles at Oxfam Australia, a consultant for International Women's Development Agency, Australia Red Cross, Oxfam International – and senior lecturer at Australian universities including, University of Melbourne, Monash University, RMIT, Canberra University, and University of NSW. Chrisanta is currently the CEO of One Girl, an organization that stands up for and currently supports girl’s education in Africa.

We are exceedingly fortunate and very grateful to have such accomplished members joining our Board, whose guidance and support will be invaluable in writing the next chapter of our shared story. The new Board is also an important step forward in creating greater diversity and inclusion per our commitment. Creating a new Board takes time. This is not a process that ought to be rushed, which is why we’ve spent a considerable amount of time since June identifying, evaluating, and interviewing prospective Board members. We will continue this process because one of our goals is for the Board to reflect the diversity of the Flying Labs network. This explains why we'll be adding a new Board member from Latin America in the future, someone who strongly complements the expertise of the new Board.

We express our sincerest thanks to Arbie, Huguette, Célesin, and Chrisanta for joining WeRobotics and wish to sincerely thank our original Board members Vijay Kumar, Gisli Olafsson, Timothy Reuter, and Anna Schwarzhappel who will join Jackie Dujmovic on our new Advisory Council. Last but certainly not least, many thanks to Catherine Saurais and Andrew Schroeder for remaining on the Board of Directors. Catherine’s vast expertise in organizational development and management is essential to our next chapter. Andrew is a fellow co-founder of WeRobotics and his strategic insights on systems change are equally essential.