BEAR x BIOrg Monthly Webinar Series 2020-2021

Ammaarah Martinus is currently the Director of Policy, Research and Analysis at the Western Cape Government in South Africa. In her current role, she focuses on managing and implementing strategic programmes in the social sector in the Western Cape, as well as innovative research and policy development. There, she leads the behavioural insights portfolio (BI4GOV) and has done extensive work in implementing and evaluating behaviourally informed programmes and interventions within government, with the view to scale. Her recent work includes scaling a Growth Mindset pilot to schools in the Province and implementing a behaviourally informed smart water meter project during the recent water crisis in Cape Town.

Date: April 14, 2021 12 PM ET
Topic: What it takes to embed BI projects in government - Moving from pilot to scale
Description: The talk will give an example of a scaled-up BI project in the Western Cape Government, the challenges, successes and essential tips for moving from pilot to scale in big bureaucracies, such as governments. It will be an open and honest overview of everything it takes to pilot, negotiate and scale a project in government.

Dr. Jiaying Zhao is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Department of Psychology and the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Zhao's work uses psychological principles to design behavioural solutions to address financial and environmental sustainability challenges.

Date: March 17, 2021 12 PM ET
Topic:The impact of direct giving on people experiencing homelessness: Experimental evidence from Vancouver, Canada
Description: Homelessness is a growing economic, health, and social crisis. To tackle homelessness, we conducted the world’s first randomized controlled trial examining the impact of unconditional cash transfers on individuals experiencing homelessness.
Specifically, we distributed a one-time unconditional cash grant of $7,500 to each of 50 homeless individuals in Vancouver, with another group as controls. Our results demonstrate that the cash transfers led to significant improvements in housing stability, food security, savings, employment, and cognitive function, with no increases in spending on temptation goods. Based on a cost-benefit analysis, the cash transfers produced net savings per person per year via reduced shelter use. Our findings suggest that unconditional cash transfers can be an effective and cost-effective solution to reduce homelessness.

Simon Brascoupé, Anishinabeg/Haudenausanee – Bear Clan is a member of Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation, Maniwaki, Quebec. Senior Vice-President Education, Communications and Services, First Nations Education Administrators Association

Brascoupé is an Adjunct Research Professor at Carleton University and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. He has a B.A. and M.A. from State University of New York at Buffalo and obtained his Certified Aboriginal Professional Administrator (CAPA) designation in 2014. Previously Brascoupé was Chief Executive Officer, National Aboriginal Health Organization; Director, Primary Health Care Division, First Nations and Inuit Health Branch, Health Canada; and Director, Aboriginal Affairs Branch, Environment Canada. He has written and worked in the field of traditional knowledge, financial literacy and is on Trent University’s Ph.D. Indigenous Knowledge Council. Simon is Co-Chair of the Indigenous Peoples Financial Literacy Working Group, Financial Consumer Agency of Canada. He has had experience with development and delivery of Indigenous Financial Wellness programs and research for AFOA Canada.

Date: February 17, 2021 12 PM ET
Topic: Indigenous Mental Health and Financial Literacy: Behavioural Insights from an Indigenous Perspective
Description: The webinar will explore the Indigenous mental health and wellness and behavioural insights to financial wellbeing, health and personal, family and community wellbeing.

Nina, was the 2019 president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and has been named one of "The 40 Most Outstanding B-School Profs Under 40 In The World” (2014). With her focus on behavioral economics she investigates the implication of human biases on welfare, development, and policy. Popular accounts of her work have appeared among others on NPR, BBC, in the New York Times, Financial Times, Wired, Harvard Business Review, and various NYTimes Bestsellers as well as in the documentary feature film “The Honest Truth about Dishonesty.”

Nina is the co-founder of BEworks, a former co-director of BEAR, and former inaugural Senior Behavioral Scientist of the World Bank’s behavioral insights team in Washington, DC. She serves as advisor on boards of various government and non-for-profit organizations (e.g., Irrational Labs in San Francisco, CA). She holds a PhD in Marketing from the University of Mainz in Germany. Her website is www.ninamazar.com.

Date: January 21, 2021 12 PM ET
Topic: Behavioural Insights in Action: From Organ Donation to Tax Compliance
Description: Professor Mažar will be discussing behavioural insights in action providing real world examples and outcomes of field experiments from organ donation studies, to tax studies conducted in Ontario, as well as in Poland (in collaboration with the World Bank).

Elizabeth Linos is a behavioral scientist and public management scholar. The majority of her research focuses on how to improve government by focusing on its people. Specifically, her studies consider how we can improve diversity in recruitment and selection, how to reduce burnout at work, and how different work environments affect performance and motivation in government. In her research on behavioral public administration, she also studies how to use low-cost nudges to reduce administrative burdens and to improve overall resident-state interactions.

Date: December 10, 2020 12 PM ET
Topic: Burnout on the Front Line
Description: Employee burnout is alarmingly high across a host of different professions, particularly for front line workers. While there is a rich literature on the predictors of burnout, there is limited causal evidence about how to mitigate it. Dr. Linos will present multiple studies on how to think about burnout as an inclusion question and experimental evidence of how to reduce it.

Will pioneered the application of behavioural science within Swiss Re, establishing a team and setting this up as a client service in 2012. By using rigorous experimentation methods, this has helped insurers optimise their customer touchpoints in sales, retention, underwriting & claims. He then moved over to iptiQ in 2016, where he now leads the Behavioural Insights Group, with responsibility for consumer insight, CX strategy and the application of behavioural science within iptiQ.

Francesca leads Swiss Re's Behavioural Research Unit – a truly unique group of industry-experienced behavioural scientists. Our aim is to design behavioural solutions for problems in the (re)insurance sector. We run field experiments and mixed-method research, which help our partners and clients determine what really works and changes policy holders' and insurers' behaviour. She has worked on setting behavioural research agendas and teams, first within the UK Behavioural Insights Team, the UK Tax Authority and now at Swiss Re. Her academic background is in economics (MA Hons from the University of Edinburgh and MSc with merit from the London School of Economics).

Date: November 19, 2020 12 PM ET
Topic: Insurance that is as attractive as humanly possible
Description: Many companies, including insurers, have dabbled in behavioural science. Some have run trials or even hired their own behavioural scientist(s). But what would it look like for an insurer to fully embrace behavioural insights in the way it operates? Will works at iptiQ, Swiss Re's primary insurance division, and has been progressively embedding behavioural insights into the organisation for the past few years. In this session, Will and Francesca will map out the behavioural science "journey" that Swiss Re has been on, share some of their most surprising case studies, and unveil the newly-developed iptiQ Human-centered Design (HD) Framework for insurance propositions – which was developed in collaboration with Prof Dilip Soman of BEAR.

Gautam Rao's research brings insights from psychology to bear on topics in economics, particularly topics relevant to developing countries. Recent projects include studying how improving sleep affects the economic outcomes of workers in India, how the endowment effect influences consumer demand for collateralized loans in Kenya, how research findings affect the beliefs and policy of mayors in Brazil, and how mixing rich and poor students in schools in India affects social preferences and behaviours.

Date: October 21, 2020 12 PM ET
Topic: The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor
Description: Gautam Rao will be presenting his research on the economic consequences of increasing sleep among the urban poor.

Fadi Makki heads the first behavioural insights & nudge unit in the Middle East – B4Development (formerly the Qatar Behavioural Insights Unit) at the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, and is founder of Nudge Lebanon and the Consumer Citizen Lab. He has 23+ years of experience in public sector reform, socio-economic development, trade policy and behavioural economics. He was former Director General of the Ministry of Economy & Trade, and Advisor to the Prime Minister of Lebanon. He served for two years on the World Economic Forum’s Council on the Future of Behavioural Sciences. He is member of the WHO’s technical advisory group on behavioural insights and sciences for health. He holds a PhD from Cambridge University, a Master degree from the London School of Economics, and a BA from the American University of Beirut.

Date: September 16, 2020 12 PM ET
Topic: Reflections from Recent Applications of Behavioural Insights to Policy Challenges in Arab Countries
Description: The purpose of this webinar is to shed lights on recent experiments by B4Develolment - the first nudge unit in the MENA region - that have used behavioural insights with a focus on two areas: first, sports contexts e.g., to promote healthy lifestyle, inclusion as well as general education. second, and more recently, COVID-19 contexts, e.g., to promote compliance with prevention measures and to sustain positive behavioral change in the new normal