MBA; LLB; Certified Gender Changemaker; Certified Digital Finance Practitioner (CDFP)

Ms. Bella P. Nyamutoka Katooro is a lawyer, Development professional and Gender Changemaker Award winner with over 15 years of experience in rural development. She is currently the Africa Regional Director for the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, IIRR, an International NGO supporting rural empowerment programs in Africa and Asia. She has multi-country experience supporting innovative rural development programs in the East and Horn of Africa impacting over 1 million rural communities especially women and young people. She also serves on the Boards of the Certified Risk Management Professionals (CRMP) and the Digital Frontiers Association (DFA) Uganda. She also sits on the Technical Committee of the Risk, Security and Resilience Standards of the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS).

Pamela provides technical expertise for risk reduction programs in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and South Sudan focusing on building resilient communities towards prevention, mitigation, individual survivability and community readiness, and establishing early warning system pathways. Before joining IIRR, she was heading Policy and Resilience at Actionaid International Uganda where she was instrumental in designing and implementing risk reduction programs particularly for refugees and displaced persons in partnership with several Government agencies including the Ministry of Disaster Preparedness and Management in Uganda under the Office of the Prime Minister, Ministry of Water and Environment amongst others.

As a Digital Finance Practitioner, she has designed financial inclusion programs to reduce risk in businesses through strengthening business resilience and continuity particularly for women-led SMEs whilst strengthening gender responsive market and supply systems particularly during and post COVID-19 pandemic. She has shared these experiences as a panelist at various fora such as at the Devex, World Bank and Facebook webinar on ‘Using Data to support women entrepreneurs during COVID-19.

Pamela is an author and recently published ‘Redefining Innovations: Stories from the field’; Other publications include ‘Digital transformation for women led Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) published in Devex.