Role: Team leader — 24-person international expert team
Rapid crisis-turnaround: rescued a project on the brink of donor cancellation and stood up five Regional Development Agencies capable of independently managing EU-funded economic development portfolios.
Kosovo faced a severe institutional capacity crisis: the state was required to take over administration of EU-funded regional development funding, but lacked the implementation structures, regional agencies, and qualified personnel to do so. After previous project leadership departed and operations stalled, the donor was seriously considering contract termination.
Diagnostics: exhaustive inventory of existing local and regional development initiatives plus a comparative analysis of funding and coordination mechanisms. Organisational design: structural framework, long-term strategies and SOPs for five new regional agencies, including job descriptions, financial protocols, and reporting workflows. Capacity building: a two-tier training framework — foundational EU-funding orientation for 90 officials and on-site technical mentorship for 30 agency specialists. Accountability: monitoring & evaluation frameworks to track funding distribution and programmatic impact.
Project rescued: stakeholder trust restored, contract cancellation averted, execution stabilised. Five regional agencies empowered to manage a development aid portfolio of approximately €17M. First support programmes launched — business incubators, industrial parks, professional training funds. Sustainable institutional capacity created for data collection, autonomous decision-making, and reporting aligned with EU standards.
Sustainable institutional transformation is a multi-layered system requiring synchronisation across four pillars: structure (design), process (workflow), people (skills), and motivation (culture). Optimising one layer while neglecting the others leaves the transformation incomplete. Stepping into a damaged, highly demotivated environment, rebuilding trust and operational stability is as critical as the technical architecture.