Testimonials
Johannes F. Linn, PhD - Former Vice-President, World Bank
Non-resident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
I worked intensively with Richard [Kohl] on a complex longterm assessment and advisory consultancy on scaling up the programs of an international development institution. We also partnered over the years in exploring scaling up and institutional change management approaches in various development contexts. In addition to years of highly relevant experience, Richard contributes a sharp intellectual perspective and strategic direction, innovative thinking, practical common sense, effective collaborative work, and a great sense of humor to any team effort he is engaged in. He will make a great contribution to any organization that is interested in enhancing its strategic planning, business development, institutional capacity building and/or successful scaling up of innovative solutions.
Dr. James Radner – University of Toronto
Richard Kohl advised me on leadership, strategy and organizational development during a critical stage of my work on leading an action research group at the University of Toronto. He was very valuable in helping move my work from a general, aspirational founding phase to a better, more focused, sustainable strategy. Richard was very effective as both a strategic advisor and a leadership coach, particularly in how to work effectively with my team and my Board, the latter during some very difficult moments. He is able to range in his thinking from high-level systems analysis and business planning to very specific implementation and leadership challenges. I would highly recommend Richard as a strategist, leadership coach, and planner.
Peter Levine, Abt
Richard Kohl and I have worked together on two occasions. He came and spent a day with Abt Associates presenting his work on scaling up and brainstorming and problem solving with several of our teams. We were so impressed with Richard and what he had to say about scaling that we invited him to give a plenary talk on scaling up to our annual Global Chief of Parties meeting which brings together project leadership from around the world.
The plenary talk was attended by over 75 project Chief of Parties, as well as our senior management team. We were not disappointed. Richard is a dynamic, charismatic and effective public speaker who has a deep understanding of the challenges of scaling up, a large toolkit on how to address them, and the ability to customize his thinking to individual cases. He has mastery over both the conceptual issues regarding scaling and the practical, day-to-day implementation challenges, and how to align the two. His presentation was funny, substantive and generally outstanding. He was able to connect his work to the experiences and challenges facing our COPs both in Q&A session and in 1:1 follow up meetings, so much so that our Australia subsidiary approached him about bringing his expertise to their portfolio.
Richard’s work with and presentations to Abt have helped us understand keys to scaling in the complex country environments we work in, improve our proposals to USAID and other clients, and mainstream scaling up in our technical assistance, monitoring/evaluation, and program design activities.
Julie Howard - USAID Bureau of Food Security
Dr. Kohl worked closely with my team at USAID’s Bureau of Food Security to help us develop and implement a practical strategy to scale up the impacts of the US global hunger and food security initiative, Feed the Future. We initially invited Richard to be a speaker and resource at a Global Learning event for our Asia programs. Mission staff found his guidance there so helpful that they requested Dr. Kohl to visit them in the field and provide direct assistance to Mission staff and implementing partners in designing or improving their scaling up strategies for Feed the Future programs.
Over the next two years, Richard worked with more than half of the 19 Feed the Future countries. In each case, he provided critical analysis and recommendations to individual Missions and their partners on the scaling strengths and weaknesses of their programs, advice on which parts of programs were suited to scaling, on improving scalability, and guidance on specific pathways and action plans for scaling. Dr. Kohl’s analysis was always incisive and often provocative, helping all of us, including the Bureau for Food Security in Washington, move forward in new and more focused ways.
Richard’s work was invaluable, helping us to move from abstract concepts of scale to pragmatic frameworks and tools that missions and their partners could apply in the field. Thanks to Richard’s input USAID Missions were better able to purposefully align and connect related projects, improve project focus, and understand the incentives driving local partner participation, Missions have already been able to significantly expand their food security and nutrition impacts on the ground. More fundamentally, Dr. Kohl’s work has allowed USAID leaders and staff to understand and internalize the key considerations and drivers of scaling. This understanding will improve planning for future food security programming over the long term. I highly recommend Richard to organizations that are interested in a penetrating, fresh look and thoughtful analysis to help scale impacts of critical programs and innovative technologies.
Larry Cooley – President Emeritus, MSI
I have known and worked closely with Richard Kohl for over 14 years, first for seven years as a Technical Director at my firm, Management Systems International, and then as an independent consultant. During his time at MSI, Richard was the project lead on a series of five grants to MSI from the MacArthur and Packard Foundations to support the scaling up of their projects in India, Mexico, and Nigeria. Over the last few years Richard has been our project lead to support and study scaling up of the US Government’s Feed the Future programs and technology innovations. He was and remains a major asset in building MSI’s scaling up practice.
Richard has a combination of skills that make him well suited to advise, assess or directly support the implementation of complex change management strategies. He is an unusual quick study, a first class conceptualizer, highly articulate, and sensitive to the dynamics and issues driving and constraining change. As an Economist, he understands the role of markets, incentives, and political economy issues. He marries that with a keen understanding of human and organizational dynamics and how to best mobilize these. He challenges conventional wisdom in ways that reframe strategic options in a new and interesting light.
Richard excels at troubleshooting, helping to frame options and assess opportunities and challenges, or introducing new perspectives and tools. In achieving results at scale, Richard is a consistent source of insights, bold ideas, and helpful counsel.
Marc Shotland -- JPAL MIT
I met Richard at a WHO convening in Geneva on Implementation and Operations Research. He was and remains one of the few voices that urged the others to approach this problem systematically and scientifically—there is a “science behind scaling up,” . Since then, Richard has helped support our work at J-PAL—a research center in the Department of Economics at MIT—where we undertake rigorous assessments and promote the scale-up of proven programs and policies. Our network of over 100 faculty affiliates conducts randomized evaluations of (usually small-scale) social programs.
When we were expanding our own scale-up efforts, we turned to Richard Kohl for advice. We invited Richard Kohl to teach at three internal and external training. His guidance on planning and building the case for scale has proven very helpful. Using the framework he helped develop, we at J-PAL Global (at MIT), along with our team in India (J-PAL South Asia), have developed and implemented strategies for scaling up several evidence-informed programs.