David Nyheim - Career History

Career History

After several years in the humanitarian and public health fields, he was recruited in 1997 to establish the Forum on Early Warning and Early Response (FEWER). His tenure as Director involved the establishment of early warning systems in the North Caucasus, West Africa, and Great Lakes region. Concerned with the absence of responses to warnings, he worked with FEWER members to combine warning systems with multi-stakeholder dialogue and planning processes in Chechnya, DR Congo, Guinea-Conakry, and Georgia.

After leaving FEWER in 2003, David Nyheim established International Conflict and Security (INCAS) Consulting Ltd. (United Kingdom) together with Anton Ivanov, Samuel Doe, and Tom Porteous. As its Chief Executive, he designed and implemented dialogue processes in Indonesia (Christian-Muslim conflicts), Mauritania (government-opposition dialogue on development), Fiji (pre-election stabilisation), and Kyrgyzstan (micro-conflicts and tensions). He worked with INCAS colleagues to develop and deliver several conflict resolution courses that combined intervention design with applied mediation/negotiation skills.

Most of Nyheim’s forecasting and strategy work has been for governments and multinational corporations. In 2003, he co-authored the Peace and Security Strategy (PASS) for Shell Nigeria that accurately predicted serious instability in the Niger Delta. After several years of focused work on the Niger Delta, which included support to the later President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, Nyheim returned to the North Caucasus in 2005, where worked with Anton Ivanov and others on a Strategic Reconstruction and Development Assessment for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (United Kingdom). That same year, he developed an integrated aid-reconciliation multi-donor strategy for Myanmar that controversially argued for active engagement with the Myanmar government.