Maha Abusamra is a consultant/trainer with over 20 years of experience in gender and programme management. She applied the Positive Deviance approach in the areas of gender equality in the Middle East and is one of the founders of the Palestine UN Gender Innovation Lab. She worked with UNDP, UNRWA and Catholic Relief Services on Gender, Governance, Social Development programmes, as well as in the private sector.

Samir Chaudhuri is the director of the Child In Need Institute with expertise in nutrition, mother & child health, adolescent health & nutrition, and child protection. He has worked with CINI, UNICEF, Dept. of Women & Child, and the government of West Bengal, India and has over 25 years of experience with the PD approach.

Lucia Dura is an academic and consultant with areas of expertise in qualitative methods and evaluation with the positive deviance approach. She has prior experience implementing positive deviance in the areas of vulnerable populations, education, healthcare, and most recently, correctional prison populations. She has worked in many countries, including the United States, Uganda, and Indonesia.

Tamotsu Ito is an organizer of the Positive Deviance Japan Network as well as a Master Black Belt of Six-Sigma with over 7 years of experience with the PD approach. His areas of expertise include the private sector and welfare for people living with dementia.

Masamine Jimba conducts global health research in many lower income countries and has advocated the Positive Deviance approach in Asian-Pacific countries for over 7 years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, his team has been carrying out WeCanChange Initiative for COVID-19 using the PD concept.

Since 2002, Paul I Kadetz has examined health and development interventions in his research and scholarship from a perspective of assets-based approaches, particularly Positive Deviance. With over 18 years of experience with the PD approach on 5 continents, he specializes in population health and international development with a focus on China, Philippines, and the United States.

Dileep Kumar is a Public Health Specialist, PhD Scholar and USAID-funded project manager who has worked with organizations like RSPN and HANDS on Positive Deviance related projects including a polio eradication program, Nutrition, Family Planning and a Maternal and Child Health Program funded by DFID, USAID and WHO. He has over 6 years of experience implementing the Positive Deviance approach in Pakistan.

F. James Levinson has been practicing positive deviance since the early 1980s and has decades of experience applying positive deviance in the nutrition realm. He has worked with UNICEF, USAID, and the World Bank in many regions around the world including South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Dr. Patricia A Omidian has over 20 years of experience using the Positive Deviance approach in psychosocial support, community wellness, and disaster/post-conflict. She has worked in West Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East for organizations such as Focusing Initiatives, Aga Khan University, UNICEF, WHO, Save The Children, and The IRC.

Nobuyuki Ota is a Partner at Valeocon Management Consulting with expertise in applying Positive Deviance to the private sector. He has worked with PD Japan in Japan and the Asia-Pacific region and has been applying the Positive Deviance approach for over four years.

Muhammad Shafique is a specialist in communication and behaviour change with areas of expertise in malaria and dengue prevention and control, maternal and newborn health, and polio eradication. He has worked with Malaria Consortium, Save the Children, and Merlin organzations and in many countries, including Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Pakistan.

Anirudra Sharma is a Positive Deviance professional with experience in nutrition work in South Asia and Nepal. He has used the positive deviance approach for over four years with organizations like Save the Children and UNICEF.

Akira Shibanuma has been a community health and economic researcher in resource-limiting settings for eight years. He teaches the Positive Deviance approach for postgraduate students in the international health program at the University of Tokyo and conducts Positive Deviance research in Cambodia.

Dr. Arvind Singhal describes himself as a sense maker and amplifier of positive deviance. Dr. Singhal has been involved with the in-depth documentation of the Positive Deviance approach. He has served as a co-facilitator of numerous PD meetings, has guided several graduate theses on positive deviance, and has raised the “volume” on PD in his courses, lectures, and keynotes in the past six years.

Monique Sternin is one of the pioneers of the PD approach and has worked closely with diverse communities and organizations worldwide to teach and implement the PD approach for over 20 years. Her work spans various sectors including education, public health, and displaced populations, among others.

Lars Thuesen is a PD consultant with 10 years of experience specialized in the justice, social, and humanitarian sector, among many others. He is involved with UN agencies, local authorities, and government sectors.

Koichiro Watanabe is an independent consultant and board chairman of a NGO. He has experience applying the Positive Deviance approach to nutrition in Vietnam, Ethiopia, and Japan for over seven years.

Randa Wilkinson has worked with the Positive Deviance Initiative in many capacities and has used her experties in facilitating the Positive Deviance approach in diverse organizations and sectors. Randa has over fifteen years of experience in PD in nutrition, healthcare, education and emergency relief. She has worked in the United States, Western and Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.