Steven's Bio
Steven has over 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 was a Rotary Peace Fellow at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok in 2022 and was a Futures Fellow with the Association of Professional Futurists in 2021-2023.
He has provided academic and research capacity-building services to Tangaza University College (Nairobi), particularly for their new PhD program in social transformation. He also supervised numerous students in the governance specialization track of this PhD program. Additionally, he collaborated with the C4DLab at the University of Nairobi to launch a multi-disciplinary design school to build Kenyan students' critical thinking and research skills.
His education is multi-disciplinary—African studies, development studies, international relations, anthropology, business, economics, and communications. He has a PhD in African Politics 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 recently completed an MPhil in Futures Studies at Stellenbosch University in Cape Town. His research focused on how youth-led mental health and trauma healing programs can move marginalized populations from futures unconsciousness to greater futures consciousness.
He also has an MA in Political Science, another MA in International Relations from Baylor University, a BA 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, social psychology and the role of trauma on futures thinking, and holistic analysis of organizational and project performance. Steven has studied French and was a Foreign Language Area Studies Fellow in Swahili and Arabic.
To access his articles, blogs, book chapters, and research, see https://linktr.ee/stevenlichty.