In January 2023, Besinati joined Social Development Direct as Co-Director of the Technical Team, providing strategic and operational leadership across SDDirect’s gender equality and social inclusion portfolios.
Besi has been working in the field of governance and social accountability for the past 20+ years, with a particular passion for demand led governance and strengthening local communities to be able to hold their duty bearers to account for their rights and commitments under policy. She has held various leadership and senior roles with national and international organisations. In the early 2000’s, Besi was the Executive Director of a large civil society network in Zambia working on poverty reduction, facilitating civil society and community voice in Zambia’s poverty reduction strategies and National Development plans across multiple sectors/thematic areas. In the most recent 8 years, Besi served as World Vision Internationals Technical Director for Social Accountability, providing leadership for the scale up and roll out of the organisation's Citizen Voice and Action work across 50 counties, covering multiple sectors and contexts, facilitating opportunities for women, children and groups often left behind to have a voice. She has chaired and served on various national and regional Boards and Steering Groups and contributed to resource acquisition for civil society programming.
Besi is from Zambia, has a BA degree in Economics from the University of Zambia and a MA in Health Economics from the University of Cape Town in South Africa.