Steven has nearly 20 years’ experience in various sectors across Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. His professional experiences include: design, monitoring, and evaluation of a range of global democracy promotion and humanitarian aid programs, including those in post-conflict, transitional, and fragile environments. He has worked with Outcome Harvesting/Mapping, social network analysis, and retrospective approaches. He also has program management experience in various sectors, taught at multiple education levels, and conducted extensive research in Africa and Asia. Steven is currently providing academic and research capacity building services to Tangaza University College (Nairobi), particularly for their new PhD programme in social transformation. He is also supervising numerous students in the governance specialization track of this PhD programme. Additionally, he is collaborating with the C4DLab at the University of Nairobi in launching a multi-disciplinary design school to build the critical thinking and research skills of Kenyan students.
His education is multi-disciplinary in scope—African politics, development studies, international relations, anthropology, business, economics, and communications. He has a PhD from the University of Florida. His Fulbright-funded dissertation research explored the internal dynamics of churches in Kenya and how these religious pedagogies of political socialization influence good governance and socio-economic development. He also has a MA in International Relations from Baylor University, a bachelor’s from Goshen College, and a certificate in social sector leadership from the Haas School of Business (UC-Berkeley). He maintains an ongoing research interest in: unlocking creativity and critical thinking skills in African students, cultural and worldview impact on theories of change, political anthropology of power, justice, and development, and holistic analysis of organizational and project performance. Steven has studied French and was a Foreign Language Area Studies Fellow in Swahili and Arabic.