Dr. Edwina Thompson

Dr Edwina Thompson specialises in the financial side of operational security: how money moves around resource operations in complex environments, and how that affects risk, trust and social licence. For more than twenty years, she has investigated financial flows, negotiated access and led teams in conflict zones and remote communities. 

This included three years with World Vision International coordinating engagement between humanitarian organisations, military forces and police. Across her career, she has developed strategies for dealing with armed groups and security forces in countries including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Somalia and Syria.

She has advised governments, banks, the United Nations and the World Bank, supported NATO counter-threat finance operations and trained law-enforcement experts. A former Royal Navy reserve officer, she founded Amanacard to verify recipients and record payments where banking access is restricted.

Her work around resource operations in Papua New Guinea links financial accountability to operational security. Verifiable payments and accountable local procurement help operators establish who receives the money, identify diversion and demonstrate that commitments to communities are honoured, reducing the risk of disputes and disruption.

She holds a PhD in Law (2007) and is the author of Trust is the Coin of the Realm (Oxford University Press, 2011; second edition, 2026) and The Other Side of the Coin: Trust, Money and Judgement in the Places the Banks Left Behind (Wombat House Publishing, 2026).