Dr. Emily Brearley has spent 25 years inside the world’s most powerful institutions — the World Bank, USAID, and the Inter-American Development Bank — leading programs across Africa, Latin America, and Asia. She’s advised the Libyan Central Bank, fought corruption inside public finance systems, and chaired the Energy Working Group for the IDB, coordinating investment strategies on renewables, taxation, and infrastructure.

But what happens when institutions built to fight poverty start protecting themselves instead?

In this episode, Emily pulls back the curtain on the hidden incentives, quiet corruption, and moral decay inside the global aid industry. She shares stories from the field — from failed billion-dollar projects to the human cost of bureaucratic blindness — and explains how good people lose their integrity inside systems that reward silence over truth.

We explore what it really means to lead when the system itself is broken — and how courage, empathy, and realism can still exist inside the machinery of power.

If you’ve ever wondered why big institutions struggle to deliver on big promises, this episode is a masterclass in leadership, incentives, and the psychology of doing good in a world built for comfort, not truth.