Adeso, the Nairobi-based humanitarian and development nonprofit, has long been a darling of the aid sector. Led by a celebrated executive director, Degan Ali, Adeso has built a reputation as a fierce advocate for the decolonisation of aid, challenging governments and philanthropies to trust Global South organisations with funding and decision-making power.
However, a months-long investigation by The New Humanitarian, sparked by a June 2025 whistleblower complaint, reveals a stark contrast between Adeso’s external advocacy and the experiences of people who have worked there. Interviews with current and former staff, as well as internal documents and communications, paint a picture of an organisation beset by a culture of fear, allegations of financial mismanagement, and a governance crisis that saw at least six board members resign in a single year.
“Whenever you hear Degan speak, she speaks about decolonising, and she’s very heavy on that,” a current Adeso staffer told The New Humanitarian. “But when you come within her organisation, it’s the direct opposite.”
Black employees have reported bearing the brunt of Adeso’s unhealthy culture. In 2024, a third-party assessment of Adeso’s organisational health found that African staff faced particular difficulty speaking up to their managers.
“If someone who is Black has an opinion on something, it won’t be taken as seriously as someone who is white,” the current staffer said.
Meanwhile, Ali has resisted oversight by framing criticism as racism or colonialism, five former insiders said.
“Much of what Degan has to say about how colonial mindsets negatively impact aid and philanthropy is spot on,” said a philanthropy executive familiar with Adeso’s inner workings. “At the same time, there are issues going on within the Adeso organisation that are evidence of organisational frailties and the lack of strong systems that are true for many organisations. Adeso is not alone on this, but when they are called on them, they are too quick to play the colonialism card.”
The New Humanitarian had a lengthy email exchange with Adeso’s leadership between August and December 2025. They rejected the allegations of staff mistreatment and financial mismanagement and said the board resignations were “unsurprising” given the pressure created by Adeso’s long-running disputes with USAID, the now-dismantled aid agency.
“Adeso firmly rejects the allegations presented and is concerned that you are being misled by a few disgruntled former employees and former board members who lack full or accurate insight into our internal operations,” Adeso’s leadership said.
They did not respond to the allegation that Ali deflected criticism by claiming racism.
Only the allegations that are substantiated by internal documents or multiple sources are included in this article.
Apart from the email exchange with Adeso’s leadership, Ali preemptively contacted The New Humanitarian’s management multiple times to express concerns about the reporting process. In December, the law firm DLA Piper sent a letter to three members of The New Humanitarian’s board warning against “publishing any false and misleading information” about Adeso.
Most former Adeso insiders who spoke to The New Humanitarian requested anonymity to avoid retaliation by Ali. Several described her as litigious.
“She’s dangerous,” said one former senior staffer. “I cannot afford to be sued by her. I’m still trying to build a life.”
Eight former Adeso insiders, including three former senior staffers, said they either experienced, witnessed, or received internal reports of mistreatment by Ali or members of her inner circle.
“What we’re talking about at Adeso is a cult of personality around an incredibly narcissistic Black woman who treats other Black women with horrifically mean, unkind, personally driven harassment and gaslighting,” said one former senior staffer, who is Black. “She said many horrible things to me about my humanity.”
The former senior staffer recalled witnessing Ali’s mistreatment of another colleague, which included “calling her names, telling her she’s a loser, telling her she’s a failure, that she can’t get it right, not listening to her, giving one set of instructions and then contradicting herself moments later”.
The colleague was often “in tears because of the way Degan talked down to her”, the former senior staffer said.
Two former senior staffers, including the one quoted above, said Ali had a tendency to remark on colleagues’ ethnicities. “She would say very mean things about Kenyans,” the second one said.
Ali’s behaviour came as a surprise to colleagues, who said they were drawn to Adeso by her charismatic stage presence and decolonial message.
“The current aid models are extremely broken,” Ali said in a 2024 interview. “We have a situation where a lot of the Global South countries that are still in poverty are dealing with an ecosystem and architecture that was developed by Global North countries and former colonisers.”
Under her leadership, Adeso has received major grants from governments and philanthropies. It has launched several prominent subsidiaries and offshoot organisations, including the civil society network NEAR and the Pledge for Change, an initiative that invites global aid organisations to commit to more equitable partnerships with local groups. Its newest initiative is the Proximate Fund, which aims to channel global philanthropic funding to African-led organisations.
Ali has been featured on a magazine cover, invited to speak on billionaire Richard Branson’s private island, and recognised as a “Nonprofit Leader of the Year” and one of the “100 Most Influential African Women”.
“One thing about Adeso that I can state unequivocally, about Degan, is that she’s an incredibly charismatic spokesperson,” said the second former senior staffer. “She’s so creative, and the things that she’s brought into the world – literally willed into the world – are so important.”
“When Degan is engaged with you, working with you, and trying to help you, she’s just phenomenal to work with. She’s funny. She has a good sense of humour. She’s brilliant,” they added.
However, the same person said: “I did see bullying. With some, it was overt and cruel at times. With me, it was more indirect. I did what I could to shield my colleagues from it.”
“She’s so creative, and the things that she’s brought into the world – literally willed into the world – are so important.”
In June last year, The New Humanitarian received a whistleblower complaint from a former staffer at the Adeso subsidiary Kuja. It described abrupt, unexplained staff terminations and a culture in which “questioning decisions, expressing discomfort, or asking for transparency is treated as a threat and punished openly”.
When asked about these allegations, Adeso’s leadership sent The New Humanitarian the findings of a 2025 investigation by the US law firm Cozen O’Connor. They commissioned the investigation in response to the same whistleblower complaint, which some of Adeso’s donors also received.
Cozen O’Connor interviewed 21 people – 70% of Kuja staff and more than 40% of Adeso staff – and said in its September 2025 report that the allegations of “an abusive work environment, a culture of silence, and a lack of transparency, resulting in high staff turnover” could not be substantiated.
But a separate third-party assessment the previous year had reached more alarming conclusions.
In early 2024, Adeso’s US board learned of a pattern of dissatisfied employees leaving the organisation, some “hurling firebombs and accusations”, according to the philanthropy executive.
Adeso hired the Ghana-based firm Busara Africa, which interviewed 39 people – 69% of Adeso staff – and published its initial findings that March. The report found Adeso’s workforce feeling overworked, underappreciated, and afraid to speak up to their superiors, according to a nonprofit leader familiar with Adeso’s inner workings, who described Busara Africa’s findings to The New Humanitarian.
Decision-making within Adeso rested primarily with Ali, whose leadership style required improvement via individual coaching, the report added, according to the nonprofit leader’s description.
The report noted high, unexplained turnover, “with many unhappy exits”, according to the nonprofit leader.
“The organisation has unwittingly mirrored the unequal power dynamics it is seeking to change in the world,” the report said.
But later that month, Busara Africa produced a second version of its report, which softened the initial criticism. Sections were renamed from “What is not going so well” to “Areas for Improvement”.
Both reports said Adeso’s leaders made decisions without consulting or involving staff, but the second version included the contradictory finding that the organisation placed a strong emphasis on listening to employees, valuing their perspectives, and fostering open communication.
The second report, according to the nonprofit leader, explained some of the changes: Throughout Busara Africa’s assessment, Adeso changed its expectations, requiring “constant adjustments” to the assessment’s scope and objectives. Adeso’s leadership found the first report to lack positive findings and “disproportionately” emphasise the negative, prompting another round of questions where staff were asked again what was going well.
Two former insiders, including the nonprofit leader, said Ali reacted defensively to the negative feedback in the first Busara Africa report, prompting the revisions. An internal communication seen by The New Humanitarian states that this was done despite the board’s opposition to modifying the initial findings.
Taaka Awori, Busara Africa’s CEO, told The New Humanitarian that the firm’s findings were “developed independently and were not influenced, manipulated, or shaped by any member of Adeso’s leadership”. She said it was common for clients to “request that additional perspectives be considered” to ensure “robust, balanced recommendations”.
Adeso’s leadership said the 2024 assessment was part of an ongoing “internal change management process” and “was not driven by any allegations of mistreatment of staff”.
“Because we take the health and wellbeing of our staff seriously, we conduct regular surveys and external assessments. None of these have ever indicated mistreatment or a toxic work environment,” they said.
Busara Africa’s second report stated that the assessment was initiated by Adeso’s management and board to address “additional organisational issues” amid “growing staff concerns and discontent”.
The Kuja whistleblower, who was interviewed as part of the assessment, said Busara Africa’s interviews were conducted carefully and with good intentions, “but I saw no changes after their work was over”. Unexplained firings and a lack of HR support for staff continued as before, they added.
Commenting on Cozen O’Connor’s 2025 investigation, the whistleblower pointed out that former staff who had already left Adeso or had been “fired in the most random, irregular, and irresponsible ways, like myself, were never interviewed”.
Another former staffer, who was aware of Cozen O’Connor’s investigation but was not interviewed, said: “I didn’t see any changes even after the investigation was done, so no, in my opinion, it made no difference.”
Despite the firm’s assurances that feedback would be confidential and not result in retaliation, the current Adeso staffer recalled not feeling safe enough to speak frankly to Cozen O’Connor: “If you’re going to give honest feedback, you become a target.”
The internal turmoil at Adeso reached a breaking point in 2024. Throughout the year, at least six members of its US board resigned (there is a separate Kenya board), leaving the body with only three voting members. While at least one member cited personal reasons for leaving, others openly denounced the “antics” and “obfuscation” Ali deployed to avoid financial oversight.
The members who resigned were relatively new to Adeso. Ali began recruiting them in late 2023 to help Adeso execute its widely publicised pursuit of financial independence.
“Adeso is on a journey to decolonise ourselves. In this journey, we are shifting from a traditional African non-profit organisation into a social enterprise, with plans to generate our own revenue,” reads the organisation’s 2023 annual report.
In 2024, some of the new members grew alarmed by Adeso’s longstanding debts to USAID and the European Union. They requested an audit of Adeso’s financial controls and liabilities. Ali assigned the task that June to the accounting firm KPMG, but the audit stalled because Adeso’s leadership failed to provide basic financial documents to the auditor for weeks, according to the internal communication The New Humanitarian has seen.
“They contracted with KPMG and then stonewalled them,” the nonprofit leader said.
Adeso’s leadership denied working with KPMG, telling The New Humanitarian their auditor is PwC.
KPMG East Africa did not respond to a request for comment.
Multiple internal documents and communications explicitly refer to KPMG as Adeso’s auditor in 2024. In a June email to Ali, one board member wrote that if a clear timeline for the KPMG audit was not established, there should be serious consequences: “Up to and including firing every single ADESO employee”.
“They contracted with KPMG and then stonewalled them.”
The board member discouraged another member from resigning, saying: “It is our duty as the current board… to see this through to [its] natural conclusion.”
Both members ultimately resigned before the end of the year, citing the lack of transparency around Adeso’s debts and the lack of cooperation with KPMG.
One of them, in the internal communication The New Humanitarian has seen, raised another allegation – that Adeso’s leadership was planning a corporate restructuring that would dissolve Adeso as a legal entity and transfer its assets to a newly created Adeso Foundation, thus complicating debt collection efforts. Two other former insiders confirmed hearing similar proposals from Ali and Adeso’s lawyers.
Adeso’s leadership did not comment on the alleged proposal to dissolve the organisation to avoid liabilities. They said Adeso has plans to establish a foundation to oversee its commercial investments – “a structure commonly used by nonprofits”.
They said the pressure created by Adeso’s disputes with USAID had a particular effect on the US board.
“It is unsurprising that some board members disagreed on how best to respond and chose to resign,” they said. “Those who stayed together with current leadership remain committed to resolving the debt fairly, contesting erroneous claims, and paying all legitimate obligations.”
“If an executive director is responsible for all and yet accountable to none, then there’s no governance.”
Josephine Oguta, a nonprofit governance expert who is not affiliated with Adeso or its critics, said a board should be able to direct an executive director to step aside to ensure that an audit takes place.
“If an executive director is responsible for all and yet accountable to none, then there’s no governance,” she said. Her comments were given in response to The New Humanitarian’s findings and are not an endorsement of the allegations against Adeso.
By resigning, Oguta added, the board members have “abdicated the duty of care” to the organisation’s staff and beneficiaries.
The start of Adeso’s disputes with USAID and the EU is a key turning point in the organisation’s institutional narrative.
“In my view, and Degan agrees, the story that’s really worth telling here is how much pressure was put on Adeso by USAID and how they had to fight like David with Goliath to survive,” Tim Boyes-Watson, Adeso’s fractional CFO, told The New Humanitarian in an email.
Since 2018, Adeso has said it would not accept large bilateral grants, preferring instead to partner with private philanthropies while transitioning to a social enterprise.
“She’s not taking money from bilateral donors because of the fact that a lot of them didn’t want to work with her anymore.”
“We have questioned the aid system from within, and have now decided to embrace being outsiders, charting a path to self-sufficiency where we control our own decisions,” reads a recent Adeso strategy document.
Three former insiders said that while this narrative is convenient for Ali, it is incomplete.
“She’s not taking money from bilateral donors because of the fact that a lot of them didn’t want to work with her anymore,” a former senior staffer said.
Public records show Adeso did not maintain its tax-exempt status in the US for several years between 2014 and 2024. It was removed from the UK’s charity registry in 2023 after not submitting the required financial documents the year before. Adeso was banned last year from receiving EU funds for three years.
Adeso’s US debts largely stem from REGAL-IR, a $45 million project aimed at assisting pastoralists in Kenya between 2012 and 2017, which USAID selected Adeso to manage. The project was terminated six months early, after achieving “nearly all of its objectives”, according to a USAID document Adeso’s leadership provided. The agency later tried to reclaim more than $18 million from Adeso.
Ali recounted the experience in a 2021 statement to a US congressional committee: “We made several very expensive and costly mistakes along the way due to our ignorance and even the ignorance of the USAID programme people we would seek advice from.”
According to a 2016 USAID document, Adeso “was mixing up activities and proposing interventions that did not reflect their development work nor protect the development gains of the project”.
In 2022, Adeso managed to get USAID’s claims reduced on appeal from $18 million to just over $160,000, which they said has been paid. The agency said in a decision letter that the reduction of one claim was in spite of Adeso’s “poor financial management”, which involved moving USAID funds between its accounts to save on time and transfer fees. The letter said this was an inappropriate use of US government funds and violated the terms of their agreement.
Aside from the claims Adeso has successfully appealed, USAID is also seeking $1.3 million related to indirect cost rates – the portion of overhead covered by a grant. Adeso has said that the amount owed is actually around $57,000, but they have had trouble contacting the Treasury Department to revise the claim.
Adeso’s leadership sent The New Humanitarian a list of six other USAID-funded organisations whose audits identified indirect cost-related issues. They presented the list as evidence that such liabilities are “common for organisations that work with the US government” and do not constitute a misuse of funds.
“This is pure Degan talk,” the nonprofit leader said. “It’s not common that [indirect cost] rates come under dispute with USAID. That’s not true, and Degan knows that.”
Other liabilities remain unresolved. Last year, the US State Department released a document listing four claims by USAID against Adeso, which total over $6.7 million.
Adeso’s leadership said the State Department document contains errors made by USAID, which their legal counsel is trying to resolve.
“We will pay back to the US government what we legitimately owe and have been servicing the payment plan that was previously agreed,” they said. “Based on our historical disputes with USAID, we are confident that we will eventually be able to confirm the amounts due and settle these liabilities in full.”
In the EU, Adeso’s debts relate to a 2013 project titled “Your Environment is Your Life”, which aimed to reduce hunger in northern Somalia. While a midterm review found the project to be largely successful, a 2018 audit resulted in the European Commission seeking repayment of over 3.2 million euros. Court documents related to the debt do not specify how it was incurred.
In 2020, an EU court rejected Adeso’s petition to annul the claim.
In late 2025, Adeso was blacklisted from receiving EU funds for three years. Its entry in the list, known as EDES, cites “grave professional misconduct”. It is the only organisation included in the public version of the list.
While the circumstances behind the blacklisting have not been made public, an EU manual on international partnerships says the designation “denotes wrongful intent or gross negligence”.
Adeso asked an EU court last December to overturn its EDES status.
DLA Piper lawyer Bob Martens, who represents Adeso in its EU disputes, did not respond to The New Humanitarian’s questions about the debts or blacklisting.
“We categorically reject any suggestion of systemic financial mismanagement,” Adeso’s leadership said. “Independent audits, donor due diligence, and our own internal reviews consistently demonstrate that we use resources responsibly and with accountability.”
Negative staff experiences have further strained Adeso’s work. This has been especially pronounced at Kuja, a subsidiary that seeks to match Global South organisations with international funding through an online platform, which Ali has described as “LinkedIn for donors”.
The Kuja platform was in development for around six years before it was launched in early 2025. Poney Carpenter, a US-based software developer whose firm was hired to work on the platform in 2019, said development had been “largely accomplished” by 2022. But a succession of additional developers and executives spent the next several years tinkering with the product and business strategy.
A former senior staffer said the Kuja platform was delayed by Ali’s “heavy-handed, authoritarian methods”, which caused staff to “leave because they get mentally and emotionally hurt”.
Prasanta Pal, a developer recruited to work on the platform in 2024, said he and his team rebuilt it in weeks, only to have Adeso leadership dismiss the work as “crap” and question his competence.
Pal told The New Humanitarian he was shocked by the hostile response, considering the multiple rounds of interviews he had passed during his recruitment.
“They made him miserable and claimed that he was some evil, satanic dude who lost his temper,” the former senior staffer said. “If you’re not doing what [Degan] wants, the way she wants it done, you will be exited. And before they exit you, she will have people basically gang up on you.”
The Kuja whistleblower, whose complaint triggered The New Humanitarian’s investigation into Adeso last June, recounted witnessing “numerous irregular dismissals, consultants working for years without labour protections, and an unusually high staff turnover”. Their own dismissal, they said, came a few months after a “forced reassignment” to a new role “without prior consultation, contractual modification, or salary adjustment”.
The whistleblower characterised this as “engineered underperformance”, in which Kuja’s director, Elena Gillis, created “adverse working conditions deliberately, to justify termination”.
“This new role requires you to be more autonomous and move with more haste,” Gillis told the whistleblower in an email less than two months after the reassignment. “As you know, I am a flexible manager and will work with you to adjust if problems arise, however you must deliver.”
Gillis fired the whistleblower five weeks later. The abrupt termination prompted an external aid worker to drop out of a Kuja speaking engagement.
“I take my personal brand very seriously and don’t want to be associated with organisations exercising poor HR practices, especially when it impacts an employee in the Global South, even more so during these dark times for the international and national aid sectors,” the aid worker told Gillis in an email, which The New Humanitarian has seen.
Adeso’s leadership said the whistleblower “did not make a report to HR or via the other channels available to staff at Adeso”. Cozen O’Connor’s 2025 report said: “No individuals interviewed expressed concerns regarding Elena Gillis or Degan Ali.”
The whistleblower only received payment for their final month of work and 30 days’ severance after threatening legal action, they told The New Humanitarian, sharing the full report they sent to HR a few days after their sudden termination.
The whistleblower’s account of forced reassignment before termination contains similar allegations to those in a pair of 2016 lawsuits filed by two former Adeso staffers in Kenya. Both claimed Ali unilaterally assigned them new roles and responsibilities that were not in their contracts shortly before terminating them.
Kenya’s labour court found Adeso to have acted unlawfully in both cases and ordered payouts totalling more than $40,000.
Adeso’s leadership told The New Humanitarian the lawsuits “did not allege bullying or a toxic work environment”. Ali said in a 2022 letter to a donor, seen by The New Humanitarian, that Kenya’s labour courts are “heavily biased towards the employees”, and the fact that the two former staffers were not awarded the full amounts they claimed “indicates that the two cases had weak standing”.
The whistleblower, as well as one other former staffer, said that while donors waited for the Kuja platform to be completed, the organisation held webinars to simulate activity.
“There was no action, no service, no benefit for anyone, and at the same time, a high pressure to grow the membership, to look good in front of the funders,” the whistleblower said. “Hundreds of organisations could have used those same funds in efficient, transparent, and impactful ways.”
Gillis did not respond to questions about the whistleblower’s termination. Adeso’s leadership did not respond to questions about the Kuja platform’s delayed launch or how many organisations have used it to secure funding.
“It’s not unique. It’s not successful,” the former senior staffer said. “If it had been ready three, four years ago, when it was supposed to be, it’d be a trailblazer… I think this thing has flopped.”
Adeso was founded in 1991 by Ali’s mother, Fatima Jibrell, an acclaimed environmental activist. At least six other relatives have served on Adeso’s boards or held staff or consulting roles – four confirmed by Adeso’s leadership and two others identified in an internal document.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the presence of relatives in nonprofits, especially those that originated as local community initiatives or are registered as social enterprises or family foundations, said Oguta, the governance expert. However, she added, a mature organisation should “put in systems and structures to limit or totally eliminate conflicts of interest”.
Two incidents in recent years caused senior Adeso staff to worry about whether the organisation had sufficient policies in place to regulate the involvement of Ali’s relatives.
In 2021, Adeso’s Kenya board approved a $300,000 payment to Jibrell from the organisation’s unrestricted fund reserve. Adeso has described it as a “pension payment” for a founder who worked for 30 years, much of that time without a regular salary. A document provided by Adeso’s leadership describes the board’s decision as unanimous.
The same document, however, reveals an irregularity: The payment was only approved by two out of five board members. The other three included Jibrell, who was absent; Ali, who recused herself; and a third absent member.
“Optically, it’s terrible,” said a former senior staffer, adding that the process exemplified Adeso’s “very poor, loose systems”.
Adeso’s leadership said no donors objected to the payment. They did not respond when asked whether two out of five board members amounts to the quorum necessary to approve such a payment. When asked why the payment came from Adeso’s unrestricted funds, they said: “Adeso does not have a pension fund in place.”
“Even if it is a good gesture, it should be anchored in policy,” Oguta said of the payment. “Otherwise, it can set a precedent that leaves a window for possible misuse of funds. Anything that an organisation does with other people’s money entrusted to it should be anchored in policy.”
Two former insiders – the nonprofit leader and a former senior staffer – raised further concerns about another relative, Alishire Mohamed. His LinkedIn profile, as well as an internal Adeso document from 2024, suggest there have been ties between Adeso and Mohamed’s private gold mining business.
According to Adeso’s leadership, Mohamed was a volunteer and then a consultant for the Durdur Water Enterprise, a subsidiary that sells water to communities in northern Somalia.
But internal documents ascribe to Mohamed a larger role. A 2024 pitch deck describes him as a project manager for the Durdur Water Enterprise.
His LinkedIn profile, until recently, described him as the general manager of Libin Investment, the Durdur Water Enterprise’s parent company, which is owned by Adeso. His profile also described Libin Investment as the parent company of another entity, Almadow Minerals, which “focuses on gold mining and processing in Somalia”, suggesting the mining company was a subsidiary of Adeso.
The 2024 internal document, which The New Humanitarian has seen, describes plans to procure “machinery for the mining project” and to transport drilling equipment from an Adeso storage facility to a gold-rich area in Somalia. It says the project was overseen by “Ali Shire”.
Leslie Fields, a current member of Adeso’s US board, said Degan Ali had proposed the mining project. “I was the one who said, no, we’re not doing that,” Fields told The New Humanitarian.
Adeso’s leadership denied any involvement in mining or affiliation with Almadow Minerals. They said they briefly considered a social-impact initiative that would have worked to “mitigate environmental harm from unregulated artisanal mining”, but they discontinued it.
Mohamed did not respond to questions from The New Humanitarian about his role at Adeso. Shortly after the questions were sent to him, references to the Durdur Water Enterprise and Libin Investment disappeared from his profile. He is still identified as the managing director of Almadow Minerals.
Adeso’s leadership said Mohamed’s relationship to Ali was disclosed as a “conflict of interest to HR and senior recruitment staff”, and Ali was not involved in his hiring.
“Durdur is a successful social enterprise fully owned by Adeso, and Alishire has contributed significantly to its achievements,” they said, adding that the business has contributed to an 86% drop in the price of water in Badhan, the town where it operates.
Adeso has said it aimed for the Durdur Water Enterprise to supply water to 70,000 households by 2026. Internal documents from 2024 and 2025 place the number of linked households at 260.
Adeso’s leadership did not respond to The New Humanitarian’s request for the current figure.
They said the involvement of Ali’s relatives in Adeso’s work was “based on their qualifications, experience, and long-standing commitment to the organisation, not simply family ties”. They added that Adeso’s identity as a “family-founded and community-driven organisation is a point of pride, not something we have ever hidden”.
“This family contribution has always been an intentional and foundational part of Adeso’s strategy,” they said.
In response to questions from The New Humanitarian, Adeso’s leadership shared a list of 36 organisations that they said served as evidence that family-founded and family-led organisations are common. The document is replete with factual errors, such as the claim that the current president of Samaritan’s Purse, Franklin Graham, is the son of the organisation’s founder, Bob Pierce. It also states that the two UK businessmen who founded Refugee Support Europe, Paul Hutchings and John Sloan, are “husband & wife”.
Nearly every former insider who spoke about their experience at Adeso described Ali’s polarising management style as an open secret for which there has been no accountability.
“While many people in the sector are aware of how Degan Ali manages her projects and team members, she continues to be invited to international panels and events as a token critical voice,” the Kuja whistleblower’s complaint said. It added that Ali has benefited from the “strategic use of decolonial discourse as a cover”.
One board member who resigned in 2024 warned colleagues that Ali had a tendency to use allegations of racism to avoid criticism, according to an internal communication. Three former insiders made similar observations.
Fields, the current board member, said that while she was excited by Adeso’s future plans, the six board resignations have left the remaining members with an increased workload, including an ongoing search for new members more than a year later.
“There was a lot of information that came at them really fast, and we had to make these hard decisions, and they weren’t used to the back and forth,” she said. “I don’t blame anybody for leaving when they did.”
Meanwhile, the philanthropy executive acknowledged that all nonprofits have weaknesses, but said that “not to own up and assertively respond to them is problematic”.
They added that Adeso’s thought leadership around decolonising aid was valuable, “but in order to be that global advocate and have power as an influencer, you better have your internal house in order”.
Nearly all of the former insiders said they believed in the potential for Adeso’s projects to transform the aid sector.
“But the leadership at Adeso, it’s a big problem,” a former Kenya-based staffer said. “If it just had the right leadership, or the right people steering this ship, then we wouldn’t be having these kinds of conversations.”
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