Steven Conway
Steve has 18 years of experience working for the UK Government in domestic and international counter terrorism (CT) and counter violent extremism (CVE) focused roles including policy, program management, diplomacy, crisis response and strategic communications.
As Director of Programs, Steve is responsible for overseeing Hedayah’s capacity and capability building activity around the world, including working to build partnerships with countries facing extremism related challenges and supporting coherence between donor funded activities.
Prior joining Hedayah in August 2025, for the previous 4 years Steve was head of the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s Counter Terrorism Network for Sub Saharan Africa. Based in Nairobi, Steve was the UK’s Senior Official responsible for coordinating CT (and CVE) work across west, east, central and southern Africa. This included setting strategic direction, ownership and escalation of key risks, supporting UK Embassies to prepare for and respond to CT related crises and ensuring delivery of CT capacity and capability building on time, on budget and delivering impact against strategic objectives, working to enable coherence between civilian, police and military efforts.
Before this, in previous roles, Steve oversaw the establishment of UK counter violent extremism strategic communications capacity building functions, supporting countries in the Middle East, North Africa, Sub Saharan Africa, Asia and Europe to establish strategic CVE capabilities; in 2019 Steve established counter disinformation analytical capability in the UK Home Office; and in 2014 Steve led the UK’s CT work in Yemen, based in the British Embassy Sana’a