ABOUT

I'm Zoé Waterlot. I think the most consequential decisions of the next decade will be made where technology meets institutions, and that too few people are equipped to see both halves of that picture clearly: the technical promise, and the human reality of what it takes to make something work.

That conviction shapes everything I do. My research looks at how digital systems change decision-making inside organisations, drawing on fieldwork in Malawi and time spent inside government and international institutions during my PhD. What I've learned there confirms the belief I started with: the gap between what a technology promises and what it delivers is rarely technical. It's a question of people, incentives and infrastructure, and closing that gap is the work I care about.

ORÉE exists because of the same conviction. The name comes from the French word for the edge of a forest, the line where one landscape becomes another. I write about the edges, where policy meets practice, where innovation meets institutions, because that's where the real decisions get made, and where the clearest thinking is needed most. My aim is to write about complex systems clearly enough that the people building them, and the people affected by them, can see the same picture.

My PhD in Human Geography, completing in 2026, gave discipline to this thinking. What I want next is for it to matter outside academia, to the governments, foundations and organisations doing the harder work of putting ideas into practice.

Outside of this, I run, hike and practise pilates to stay grounded, and paint and write when I need a different language entirely.

Get in touch at hello@zoewaterlot, or find me on LinkedIn.