TPI is excited to announce our expansion into North America. For more information about our services and opportunities in this region, please visit our dedicated TPI North America webpage or contact one of our TPI North America team leads listed below.
Priyanka Brunese
TPI North America Lead
Priyanka is a seasoned pracademic with over 15 years of experience in fostering cross-sector partnerships, driving sustainable impact through evidence-based solutions in both academic and practice settings. Specializing in systems thinking, applied research, participatory evaluation methods and multi-stakeholder collaboration, she founded Saath Partners to help organizations catalyze impact through research, collaboration, and innovation.
Currently serving as an associate at The Partnering Initiative (TPI), Priyanka has consulted for CGIAR and The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT on their partnership strategies for research impact, and FAO on their private sector engagement strategy.
Before launching her business, Priyanka served as the Director of Research Development at Purdue University’s Honors College where she established impactful interdisciplinary research programs and taught systems thinking coursework. From 2019 to 2023, she was a research scientist and research manager at the USAID-funded LASER PULSE Consortium, where she co-developed the Embedded Research Translation (ERT) methodology, a systematic approach to co-create research between academia and practice to increase research impact. ERT has been implemented in over 50 projects across 21 countries. Priyanka also led USAID’s research on private sector engagement, developing an evidence-based toolkit to help iNGOs, USAID, and industry partners design and implement impactful partnerships. Additionally, she has served as the MEL specialist for Purdue’s Center for Regional Development and Community Development Extension.
Priyanka is a published author and has contributed to numerous academic papers and books on topics such as academic-practitioner collaborations, partnering for research impact, and cross-sector partnerships. Priyanka has a PhD from Purdue University’s Technology Leadership & Innovation department, with her dissertation focusing on shared leadership models in cross-sector collaborations. She was also an ELISS (Emerging Leaders in Science and Society) Fellow. Born and raised in Mumbai, India, she currently lives in the United States.
Ian Lobo
TPI North America Lead
Ian has 25 years’ experience leading consulting engagements in growth strategy, social innovation, shared value partnerships and new venture start-ups. An accredited Partnership Broker and skilled facilitator, he has worked with leading social impact companies (Unilever, Microsoft, Coca Cola, Google), United Nations agencies (WHO, WFP, UNICEF), Foundations (Rockefeller Foundation, Shell Foundation, UN Foundation), International NGOs (Aspen Institute, Fair Trade, World Vision, The Nature Conservancy), and partnerships (World Economic Forum’s SAGCOT & Grow Asia, Medicines Patent Pool, Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves).
Ian is passionate about community-led systems transformation and has led collective impact initiatives to create employment opportunities for refugees and marginalized youth, accelerate access to medicines in low income countries, and expand energy access in rural communities.
In 2017, after 20 years living abroad in London, Geneva, Sydney, Nairobi, and São Paulo, Ian returned to Toronto, continuing to work globally as well as at home in Canada.
