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A conversation with Laura Todescato on building inclusive teams that last
Interviewed by Hind Akil Haidar for ADC
7/28/2026
In this conversation with ADC, Laura reflects on where organisations get inclusion wrong, what an inclusive team looks like in practice, and why good leadership should make itself less necessary over time.
Laura Todescato has spent nearly a decade working in international cooperation across Sub-Saharan Africa, including Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Madagascar, Liberia, Guinea-Bissau and The Gambia. Her work spans disability inclusion, sexual and reproductive health and rights, child protection and education.
Her message is direct: inclusion is not an extra person in the room or a paragraph in a proposal. It begins much earlier, with who asks the questions, who shapes the decisions and who remains able to lead after an international programme ends
From Numbers to People
From Numbers to People
Laura's route into international cooperation began with finance. She studied accountancy, followed the stock exchange. Numbers made sense to her, the logic of a balanced system were comforting, but eventually not enough. I would describe Laura as too colorful to be someone who is willing to spend their life in an office, crunching number. European studies brought her closer to policy and human rights, while early experiences at the European Parliament and the Permanent Mission of Italy to the United Nations gave her what she calls her policy grounding. Sierra Leone gave her everything else.
“Sierra Leone was my first experience, so also my first love. I realised that international cooperation was something I was really interested in. I like to talk with people and find solutions. I knew that I wanted to implement projects and stay close to the people.”
Sierra Leone is where Laura’s passion for problem solving switched from numbers to humanity. Her financial background became the door into NGO work, first in admin roles and later in project management, country leadership and regional programme management. Rather than leaving finance behind, she carried its discipline into implementation.
“Knowing the administrative and financial part of a project is a milestone. When you design a project, it is never the same when you implement it. You need to be flexible enough to support implementation and reshape it when needed.”
Where do organisations get inclusion wrong?
Where do organisations get inclusion wrong?
Reflecting on ADC’s last conversation with Janina, the question of what orgs do wrong have become a staple. Every expert I’ve spoken to so far agrees that treating inclusion as an afterthought is the number one mistake across the board. However, their unique experiences give us layer to this question. Laura identified three recurring mistakes. The first as mentioned is treating inclusion as an add-on rather than a design principle.
“Teams write inclusion into their proposal, add a specialist to the organisational chart, and then run the programme as they would have anyway. The result is a project that references inclusion but does not practise it.”
The second is confusing diversity with inclusion. A team may include women, national staff and persons with disabilities while its decisions remain controlled by the most senior, most international or most fluent English speaker in the room. Presence matters, but presence alone does not redistribute influence.
“Having women, national staff or persons with disabilities in the team is just a starting point. It is not the same as ensuring that their voices are heard and that their voices shape decisions.”
The third mistake is consultation that comes too late. Organisations of persons with disabilities, women's organisations and other affected groups are often invited into a process when the project is already largely designed. At that stage, participation can become performative. Laura is frank that genuine consultation takes time and can involve disagreement among groups with different priorities. Still, she sees that time as an investment that prevents larger problems later.
“We involve them when the design is already 80 per cent finalised rather than co-constructing the questions from the start. Inclusion is easier to declare than to build. Consultation takes a lot of time, but it is time well invested because it solves problems along the line and prevents risks.”
What does an inclusive team look like?
What does an inclusive team look like?
Laura's clearest lessons came from Liberia, where she managed a major programme on disability inclusion. For her, an inclusive team is not one without disagreement. It is one where disagreement does not carry a political cost.
“In an inclusive team, national staff can challenge an HQ decision, a junior staff member can question a senior expert, and a person with a disability can point out that the accessible venue is in fact not accessible. This kind of safety takes time to build, and it depends far more on how leadership responds to challenge than on any policy document.”
Inclusion also lives in details that can easily be dismissed as logistical: who chairs the meeting, whether translation is available in real time, and which working language sets the terms of the discussion. These choices determine who can participate fully and, ultimately, who shapes the outcome.
“The team is my eyes, my arms and the engine of the decisions. I make sure that I do not only delegate; we share the decision-making process.”
Leadership that leaves something behind
Leadership that leaves something behind
During consultations in Liberia on decent work and disability inclusion, Laura's colleague repeatedly asked her to open discussions as the programme head. Laura sometimes agreed, but more often encouraged her colleague to lead. This was not withdrawal. It was a deliberate effort to ensure that the language, confidence and ownership created through the programme remained rooted in the country.
“What comes out of those consultations is what stays in the countries where I work. I will leave one day. It is much more important that the progress and the decisions come from the roots, from the groups. We are never alone, we are always together, but my colleague was very good at taking the lead.”
The principle became tangible when Laura left Liberia. She strongly recommended that a national colleague replace her, and they became interim country coordinator. The decision was challenging for headquarters, but Laura pushed for it because she had benefited from the same trust earlier in her own career.
“I reached this level because I found people who gave me the opportunity to make mistakes. Someone looked at me and said, you started as an administrator, now let us try you as a project manager. We need to give national teams the same opportunity to grow and also to make mistakes.”
What changes when the team is genuinely inclusive?
What changes when the team is genuinely inclusive?
Laura sees the first impact in the quality of decisions. Inclusive teams read context more accurately, identify risks earlier and design interventions that can survive the move from proposal to implementation. In fragile settings, she says, this can be the difference between a project that adapts and one that fails.
The second impact is legitimacy. When national partners, organisations of persons with disabilities, communities, ministries and employers have shaped a programme, they are more likely to defend it in national forums, not only describe it in a donor report. The third impact is institutional memory. National staff grow into senior technical roles, and expertise remains in the country rather than leaving with each expatriate rotation.
“Ownership is a precondition for sustainability. One of the most meaningful markers of a successful programme is that, when I leave, the capacity does not leave with me. It stays with the team.”
Laura's advice: start with the questions
Laura's advice: start with the questions
When Laura first arrived in Sierra Leone, a colleague turned to her after a few weeks and said, 'Laura, you ask a lot of questions.' Years later, that habit has become the simplest expression of her leadership approach.
“Start with the questions, not the answers. Most of the time, we begin with the answer because we think we know. We need to ask who is in the room when the direction is being set. If organisations of persons with disabilities, national staff and local partners are not part of the conversation, no methodology, log frame or inclusion policy will fix it further downstream.”
For Laura, inclusion is not something added to a programme after its architecture has been decided. It is a property of the process that produces it. Her final advice is therefore as practical as it is demanding:
“Start with the question, and listen to the answer.”
Laura Todescato is an international cooperation professional specialising in disability inclusion, sexual and reproductive health and rights, child protection, education and programme management across Sub-Saharan Africa. Read her narrative biography by ADC.
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