Arwen Bailey

Arwen Bailey is an Alliance knowledge-sharing and science communications specialist, and manager of the Knowledge Sharing Unit. Her passion is strategically connecting people and connecting ideas, and increasing access to information and opportunities for dialogue inside and outside the Alliance in order to foster new knowledge. Arwen has an MSc in Systems Thinking in Practice (MSc). Her systems thinking practice informs her work, providing tools and methods for exploring complex and intractable situations, and nudging them towards a better state. Arwen is a strategic thinker, and was part of the small teams who developed the Alliance strategy and the Agrobiodiversity Index, among others.

Main interests are social learning for change (especially communities of practice); unpacking and activating how change happens through people knowing, doing or believing different things; designing knowledge sharing mechanisms from 1-hour meetings to the weeklong Science Week; and challenging boundaries of which people are in or out, which ideas are in or out. Her work is informed by a strong gender and social inclusion lens and deep experience of agrobiodiversity research.

Current communities of practice include the CGIAR-wide Gender-Transformative Research Methodologies CoP and the Alliance Gender Nexus Enabler.

She also produces ‘information products’ such as summaries, books, and compilations of best practices, experiences and learnings in a digestible form so that they can be used by other people for their own needs.

Arwen is an active member of KM4Dev – the knowledge management for development group of knowledge-sharing professionals. And she is a certified Community Manager by the World Bank Group.
Arwen won the CGIAR prize for Inclusive Role Model in 2022, and was part of the Agrobiodiversity Index team winning the Food Planet Prize in 2023.