Everything you need to understand how we find, shape, and win work — and how CBD supports every practice across the firm.
Jump to ResourcesWelcome on board! I look forward to our upcoming onboarding session — where I'll introduce the CBD team and also learn more about you and your work. In the meantime, bookmark the resources below. They'll be your go-to references for navigating how Athena approaches business development.
Our Mandate
CBD is Athena's firm-wide engine for finding, shaping, and winning work.
CBD sits at the centre of Athena's growth strategy. We manage the full BD lifecycle — from scanning donor pipelines to submitting winning bids — and support every practice across MERL/A, IBU, GSD, DTS, and Community Compass. We don't operate in isolation: our job is to make BD easier, faster, and better for the whole firm.
As a new joiner, CBD is your first call for proposal questions, past work references, partner intel, and BD process guidance. We hold the institutional knowledge of every bid Athena has run.
Scope of Work
Track ~200 donor portals and networks. Surface the right bids before the window closes.
Lead, coordinate, and QA technical and financial proposals across all five practices.
Maintain the firm-wide bid pipeline. Track win rates, loss analysis, and BD performance.
Manage consortium relationships. Build account intelligence on key clients and donors.
Run the CBD Database and AskCBD agent — making past work searchable and reusable.
Monitor funding trends across FCDO, USAID, World Bank, EU, BMGF, and bilateral donors.
Our BD Model
CBD's operating model for FY 2026–27 — how we turn BD from a reactive function into a strategic growth engine.
Use existing relationships, frameworks, and past performance to open new doors — without starting from scratch every bid.
Integrate BD thinking into project teams. The best business developers are often the people doing the delivery work.
Reduce manual BD overhead through AI-assisted tools — from opportunity screening to proposal drafting and data retrieval.
Turn methodologies, tools, and delivery models into repeatable, sellable offers that scale across markets and clients.
Your Starter Kit
Bookmark these. You'll return to all of them — whether you're writing a proposal, finding a past project, or figuring out who to call.
First Steps
New to Athena and CBD? Here's the fastest path from "Day 1" to "I can find and use what I need."
Talk to your reporting manager. Then email Shivi to initiate IT approval for the CBD Database and SharePoint resources.
Start with Shivi's CBD session (Resource #1). Gives you the full picture before diving into the database.
Read the Navigation Guide (Resource #3), then watch the tutorial video (Resource #4). Then explore.
Use the AI agent to ask a real question — find a proposal, a PDS, a past project. Playbook (Resource #6) will help.
The People
Your first points of contact for anything BD — proposals, pipeline, past work, or just figuring out where to start.