Sustainable Solutions

An advisory practice for organisations building something new.

Sustainable Solutions is a design studio for social programmes and policy initiatives. We work with organisations and their leaders to move from idea to pilot to launch, helping shape early thinking into clear, workable concepts to be built and carried through to delivery.

What we do

Work runs in four stages. Clients commission all four, or any one of them.

Concept

what to build

A shortlist of ideas, with the case for and against each.
The problem stated clearly, from interviews and focus groups.
A map of who else is active, and where the gaps are.
An evidence-based assessment of whether it will work.

Design

how it works

The mandate: what it does, and what it leaves to others.
Governance, structure, decision rights, and the board.
How the activities and partnerships produce the desired result.
A staffing plan and a funding model, costed for year one.

Build

standing it up

A first-year plan with milestones.
The documents needed on day one: terms of reference, procedures, templates.
A pilot at small scale, with a way to judge how it went.
A launch plan: what to communicate, who to tell, and in what order.

Scale

what comes next

Indicators and data you can track yourself.
A route from pilot to full programme.
What it would take to repeat it elsewhere.
How to correct course when things do not go as planned.

Across each stage, the focus is the same: turning our client’s ideas into clear, workable models they can take forward.

How we staff the work

A small core team, with specialists brought in for each engagement from Doha and internationally.

How we work

Bespoke advisory engagements are commissioned by organisations around a defined idea, challenge or opportunity. We also develop collective initiatives that bring organisations together around questions and priorities they share.

Our own initiatives

The Doha Economic Policy Initiative

DEPI is a programme through which policy-aware firms in Qatar commission joint research, convening and analysis on questions they share. The first programme examines how the private sector should position itself for a post-2030 economy. It launches in 2026.

DEPI is our demonstration of the model, built the way we would build yours. dohaepi.org

People

Nader Kabbani, Managing Director

Nader Kabbani has a 30-year career in policy research and international development, and has led more than a dozen initiatives across the region. Most recently, as Senior Advisor to the Syrian Minister of Finance, he led the development of a national poverty eradication and livelihoods restoration strategy. At the Middle East Council, he led the design and launch of the Doha Global South Health Policy Initiative, a collaboration with the Gates Foundation. He holds a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University, and works in Arabic and English.