Advisory Board

David Wright is a leading international expert on all forms of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). He has significant senior experience of planning and delivering value for money PPP projects, first as a United Kingdom (UK) civil servant in the 1990’s and as a senior adviser, trainer and mentor to many governments around the world for the last 20 years.

In addition to delivering infrastructure, he teaches how best to do it. He transfers his extensive knowledge of good (and bad) international practice to help government officials and private sector employees understand how they can efficiently and effectively run PPP programmes and deliver PPP infrastructure projects themselves.

David was responsible for delivering the first two prison Private Finance Initiative (PFI) projects, developing overall UK’s PFI policy, writing the business case, developing project documentation, managing the two projects, negotiating the commercial and financial terms and justifying value for money.

Between 1996 and 1999, as Head of PFI in the UK Government’s Funding Agency for Schools, and then as a member of the UK Department for Education’s Private Finance team, he analysed proposed PPP school schemes, determining whether the need for schemes was justified by local and national factors. He worked with advisers to develop output specifications for the service provision for individual schools. He assisted school governing bodies to negotiate the deals.

As an Associate of the UK Treasury Task Force and PartnershipsUK, David developed a unique blend of project analysis at the highest levels and assistance with the detailed negotiation of a number of significant grouped schools projects, including Haringey, Liverpool, Tower Hamlets, and East Lothian schemes. He was involved in the work on drafting standard PFI contracts in the education sector. He reviewed proposed projects in a number of sectors including health, education, criminal justice and nuclear energy.

David has continuously provided bespoke project finance and PPP training and capacity building initiatives to a number of public bodies including government ministries and private companies across the globe. He brings on board vast experience in managing complex projects and in leading teams in identifying commercial solutions to social and economically desirable projects.

Rosa Maria Pastor Nicolas is a Civil Engineer with almost 20 years’ experience in leading large and complex construction and EPC infrastructure projects that have enabled her gain in-depth experience in project structuring and financing, including some innovative approaches to accelerate infrastructure investment like Work for Taxes or Government to Government Agreements.

Throughout her career she has been able to manage different infrastructure frameworks, including collaborative Public Private Partnerships, Concessions, EPC projects and projects involving multiple stakeholders from several countries involved.

Having worked in Europe, South America and Africa gives her a wide perspective on how to approach the multiple challenges of project infrastructure that is necessary for the complex development structure of projects especially in the emerging markets.

At the beginning of her career she worked in major construction projects in Spain, and in 2005 she became a Project Manager leading the construction of highways and railways that included several kilometres of viaducts and tunnels and massive amounts of earth movement and asphalt pavement. Afterwards she moved to Peru where she was able to direct a wider portfolio with more spectacular bridges and roads, water sanitation projects, and electric lines and substations in the rainforest.

She was also responsible for Kenya and Ethiopia High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) bipole with AC/DC converter stations, with a power transfer capacity of up to 2,000 MW for an international company, projects funded by the World Bank and the African Development Bank. Besides, she was also a Consultant on the engineering, implementation of the construction for the Trans Gambia Bridge project.

She is currently the Civil Project Manager of OHLA Group, Peru, in charge of all civil projects in Peru. Among them are relevant highways and roads of over 100 km long, dams, mining projects, river defences, water sanitation and other complex projects with an overall budget of over $1000 million. With her solid background as a former project director, accompanied by a high level of technical know-how, she has the responsibility of the project results in the country, overseeing and monitoring the directors in all the relevant aspects of them.

Rosa Maria holds a Civil Engineering degree and also a Master in Civil Engineering from the University of Cantabria, Spain. She has also undertaken other specialization courses including an Advanced Course in Management of Major Projects and has also lectured at some Universities and seminars in Spain and Peru.

Jose is a Civil Engineer (University of Granada, Spain), and Master in Business Administration (IESE Business School, Barcelona, Spain). He also studied at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences of the University of California, Los Angeles. Jose has worked for the strategic consultancy McKinsey&Company, where he was a management consultant, and for several of the largest international construction, industrial and real estate groups in Spain (Ferrovial, FCC, and Metrovacesa). He has twenty-five years of experience in the industry and management consulting, analyzing complex situations and problems and proposing implementable solutions for clients at global scale. Jose has worked on consulting assignments for public and private clients in more than forty different countries across Europe, Asia, Africa and America. Jose has been Team Leader in more than one hundred projects for Development Finance Institutions, like the World Bank, African Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank or the International Finance Corporation.

Joel is an infrastructure and economic development expert, with a focus on both public and private sector led opportunities and transactions that ultimately drive economic and sustainable development. Within this field he has led infrastructure transactions, diagnostic research projects and developed strategies at a sectoral and national level. Joel also has extensive managerial and business development experience. He has over 10 years of economics and financial advisory expertise working with a leading African consultancy, Genesis Analytics, and until recently was the Partnerships and Investment Strategy Lead at the Development Bank of Southern Africa. He simultaneously heads up the Africa office of the Sustainable Development Investment Partnership, an initiative of the World Economic Forum. Joel is currently the lead advisor to the UK Government Foreign Commonwealth Development Office for the just energy programme for South Africa.

Over his career, he has built deep expertise in project development and implementation, project finance, project due diligence and appraisal, as well as sustainable finance. Joel has worked on multiple public and private sector infrastructure, private sector development, and sustainable finance projects for private clients, governments as well as international development associations and donor organisations. Joel has experience across the energy, real estate, water and other key economic and social sectors. His experience also cuts across various markets in Africa, including Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Tanzania. He is well experienced at managing teams with diverse skills across geographies.
Joel holds an MSc in the Political Economy of Development from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He also has a Master’s in Financial Markets from Rhodes University (cum laude) and recently completed his PhD.

Ambassador John Mwangemi has over 25 years of experience spanning both the public and private sectors across Africa, Middle East and Europe. He held senior executive roles in multinational corporations, including Diversey Corporation (now part of Sealed Air), where he served as Vice President for the Institutional Sector in Europe and also led operations across Africa and the Middle East.

He has also serviced in public service as Kenya’s High Commissioner to Rwanda, where he worked to deepen bilateral relations and promote regional trade. He later served as Kenya’s Ambassador to Djibouti and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), playing a key role in advancing Kenya’s strategic interests and integration efforts within the Horn of Africa region.

In July 2021, Mwangemi was appointed Acting Managing Director of the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA). During his tenure, he focused on operational efficiency, institutional reform, and aligning the port’s strategic direction with Vision 2030 and the KPA Master Plan. His leadership was nationally and regionally recognized, including being named Africa’s “CEO of the Week” by Public Sector Global Magazine in October 2022. He handed over leadership of KPA in July 2025 to Captain William Kipkemboi Ruto.

Ambassador Mwangemi holds a Master’s degree from the University of Liverpool School of Business in the UK. He has also undertaken executive education at leading institutions such as the Université Clermont Ferrand in France, London Business School, University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science, and Cranfield School of Management in the UK—building a strong foundation for his roles in global business and diplomacy.

Ambassador Mwangemi brings strategic advisory and relationship management to the Miundo Misingi Hub.