Dr. Steven Lichty is a Senior Technical Advisor at I4DI, where he brings a rare combination of rigorous evaluation expertise and transformative foresight — helping clients not only understand what happened and why, but anticipate what’s coming next. With over 25 years of experience across more than 100 countries, Steven works at the intersection of applied research, complex evaluation, and futures thinking to help organizations navigate uncertainty and design strategies that hold up under changing conditions.

Steven’s career has spanned humanitarian response, democracy and governance, resilience programming, and agricultural development — always with a focus on helping organizations see around corners. He co-founded REAL Consulting Group in Nairobi, where he has led evaluations and research for USAID, DFID, Danida, Save the Children, and Rotary International, specializing in outcome harvesting, social network analysis, and systems mapping. At I4DI, he has co-led impact assessments of Mars Inc.’s cocoa sustainability efforts in Indonesia and supports ongoing research and foresight engagements. He is also the founder of Frontline Futures, a foresight practice focused on the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, and serves as Board Chair of the Participatory Futures Global Swarm. He sits on the board of the Association of Professional Futurists, where he leads the Foresight Evaluation Initiative and serves as the Africa Regional Developer.

Steven is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts, a Rotary Peace Fellow, and a widely published scholar — with work appearing in the Journal of Futures Studies, Foresight, and the forthcoming Routledge International Handbook of Trauma. He holds a Ph.D. in African Politics from the University of Florida, an MPhil in Futures Studies (cum laude) from Stellenbosch University, and graduate degrees in International Relations and Political Science. He is based in Nairobi and speaks French and Swahili.