13 June 2024

Welcoming Michael Jarvis to Accountability Counsel’s Board of Directors!

Accountability Counsel is thrilled to announce that Michael Jarvis has joined our Board of Directors. Michael has advocated for more accountable government and corporate practices throughout his career. Michael will provide valuable governance and advocacy advice to Accountability Counsel, given his expertise on impactful and accountable financing and leadership experience at the Trust, Accountability and Inclusion Collaborative – Funders for Participatory Governance (TAI Collaborative). At TAI Collaborative, Michael advises both philanthropic and government donors regarding strategy and practice for over $500 million in active grants related to issues of climate accountability, democratic participation, and more just economies.

Michael shares Accountability Counsel’s commitment to holding financial flows accountable to people and the planet. We extend a warm welcome to Michael and express our gratitude to him for joining our Board!

More about Michael:

Michael is a leading expert in the design and support of international development programming and a champion of impactful funding practices. He leads the Trust, Accountability and Inclusion Collaborative – Funders for Participatory Governance (formerly the Transparency and Accountability Initiative), a platform for funder learning and collective action. Having successfully led the relaunch and subsequent growth of the collaborative, Michael advises both philanthropic and government donors regarding strategy and practice for over $500 million in active grants related to issues of climate accountability, democratic participation and more just economies. He enjoys engaging with member funders and field partners to assess portfolio impacts, analyze field trends, scope investment opportunities, and evolve grantmaking practices to “walk the talk” on trust, accountability and inclusion.

Michael has pushed for more accountable government and corporate practices throughout his career. He worked on industry codes of conduct and as a consultant on corporate responsibility and transparency issues, including a focus on the agribusiness, chemical and defense industries. An historian by training, he managed investigations in support of litigation to help communities get restitution from environmental and social damages.

In subsequent roles, notably during over a decade at the World Bank, Michael incubated new initiatives ranging from collective action against corruption to a business alliance against malnutrition to the Open Contracting Partnership. The latter is now a 30-person strong organization working on all major continents to better outcomes from the estimated $9.5 trillion in public-private contracts globally. With deep expertise in natural resource management issues, Michael was the World Bank’s Global Lead for Extractives Governance, influencing programming to strengthen good governance in the critical oil, gas and mining sectors. He led the creation of community-led monitoring of mining agreements in multiple regions, strengthened opportunities for civil society engagement in multilateral programming, and started the governance of extractive industries platform (GOXI). It became one of the largest communities of practice managed by the World Bank.

Michael has advanced degrees from the University of Cambridge and Johns Hopkins University. A frequent author and blogger, he can often be found in obscure music venues and misses his time as a radio DJ.