Francis "Kapi" Capistrano is currently UNDP Philippines Accelerator Lab's Head of Experimentation. Through this role, he collaborates with programme team members and partners in designing and implementing experiments on frontier development areas such as civic action against poverty, marine litter, and sustainable cities. He is the focal for UNDP ALab's engagement with the ZEP 2030 PH coalition. He also dabbles into data innovation, helping to set up the Pintig Lab. Kapi was a journalist who probably asked too many questions and that’s why he’s now in development and policymaking. He brings his core skills of asking questions, interrogating assumptions, and telling stories into public sector management reform and innovation, knowledge management and strategic communication, and monitoring and evaluation (M&E). He is a fiscal transparency geek, has a love-hate relationship with procurement, and is obsessed with the quest for the elusive counterfactual. 

 

Prior to taking on the Head of Experimentation of UNDP Philippines' Accelerator Lab, he served as Project Coordinator of the NEDA-UNDP Strategic M&E Project and Senior Project Officer of the DepEd-UNDP computerization project. Before UNDP, he helped pursue budget reforms and open government innovations at the Department of Budget and Management; performed complete staff work on landmark socio-economic policies as a Senate staffer; and covered political economy issues as a reporter for BusinessWorld. He is an AB Communication graduate who is currently writing his thesis on procurement in the Philippines for Master's in Development Economics.