Search Results

Your search for Global Policy & Economics returned 23 results

David Andelman
Editor in Chief, World Policy Journal

David A. Andelman is Editor in Chief of the World Policy Journal, a non-partisan source of progressive global policy analysis and thought leadership. In his role, David leads the transformation of the World Policy Institute's flagship quarterly, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary in Fall 2008. He has served as a domestic and foreign correspondent for The New York Times in various posts in New York and Washington, as Southeast Asia bureau chief, based in Bangkok, then East European bureau chief, based in Belgrade. He then moved to CBS News where he served for seven years as Paris Correspondent. He has traveled through, and reported from, more than 50 countries. There followed service as a Washington correspondent for CNBC, news editor of Bloomberg News and Business Editor of the New York Daily News before coming to Forbes. He is the author of three books: The Peacemakers, published by Harper & Row; The Fourth World War, published by William Morrow, which he co-authored with the Count de Marenches, long-time head of French intelligence; and A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today, published in October 2007 by John Wiley & Sons. Mr. Andelman has written for such publications as Harpers, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs. He is a graduate of Harvard University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Grolier Club.

Dan Ariely
Behavioral Economist; Author of best-selling book Predictably Irrational

Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University and visiting Professor at the MIT Media Lab. A behavioral economist, Ariely’s research has shown that we all succumb to irrationality in situations where rational thought is expected. He is an expert on how people actually act–and why they act–in all kinds of business and economic environments, and what this means for business innovation, strategy, marketing and pricing.

Ariely's forthcoming book Living Irrationally (June 2010) explores fascinating findings from the hundreds of 'experiments' Dan does for his research. He'll dive into personal life (what makes us happy, how we as humans adapt and change, how we date and find mates), work life (what really motivates us, financial vs. non-financial rewards, trust, revenge) and the slippery slope of cheating (how it starts, how it snowballs). He'll pay special attention to the financial and debt crisis, and the post-crash economy and what this means for employers, marketers and public policy. Ariely is also author of the best-selling Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. In this book, Dan presents research findings that provide new insights into human behavior that will help us make better decisions as individuals, as corporations, and as a society.

Ariely received a Ph.D. in marketing from Duke University, a Ph.D. and M.A. in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a B.A. in psychology from Tel Aviv University.

He publishes widely in the leading scholarly journals in economics, psychology, and business. His work has been featured in a variety of media including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Business 2.0, Scientific American, Science, CNN, NPR, and he was interviewed for ABC's 20/20.

As a speaker, Ariely has a natural and unique talent for turning his research into vignettes that are fun, relevant and engaging, and for delivering the results in a genuinely charming, original, and often comical way.

George Ayittey
Recognized Authority on Africa and Economic Development

George Ayittey is a Ghanaian economist and widely recognized authority on political and economic development in Africa. A distinguished economist in residence at American University and president of the Free Africa Foundation, George has championed the idea that “Africa is poor because she is not free.” True freedom never came to much of Africa after independence from colonial rule, says his first book, Africa Betrayed, which won the H.L. Mencken Award for “Best Book in 1992.”

In the analysis of Africa’s woes, George believes that a much greater emphasis should be placed on internal factors—bad leadership, corruption, military vandalism, and exploitation of the African people—rather than the external factors. George stresses "internal solutions" and initiatives that must come from Africa itself. He coined the expression: “African solutions for African problems.” Crying out against the “vampire states” and dysfunctional governments that, he believes, are the bedrock of problems of many troubled Africa states, George speaks passionately about the grassroots enterprises that will enable “Africans to take back Africa – one village at a time.”

His influential book Africa Unchained boldly proposes a program of development—a way forward—for Africa, investigating how Africa can modernize, build, and improve its indigenous institutions. George argues forcefully that Africa’s salvation lies in Africa itself – not inside the corridors of the U.S. Congress or the inner sanctum of the World Bank. Africa’s salvation lies in returning to and building upon its own indigenous institutions and traditions of free village markets and free trade—rather than continuing to use alien and exploitative economic structures. The critically acclaimed book has helped unleash a new wave of activism and optimism about Africa.

His recent efforts have focused on identifying profitable enterprises for “Cheetahs” —a new breed of Africans taking their futures into their own hands instead of waiting for politicians to empower them. His speech “Cheetahs vs. Hippos for Africa's Future: made a powerful impact at the TED Global Conference 2007 in Arusha, Tanzania.

George earned a Ph.D. from the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada; an M.A. University of Western Ontario, London, Canada and a B.Sc. Univ. of Ghana, Legon, Ghana.

Yochai Benkler
Law Professor and Internet Scholar

Yochai Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard. Prior to coming to Harvard, he was Joseph M. Field '55 Professor of Law at Yale. He writes about the Internet and the emergence of networked economy and society. Since the 1990s he has been a major theorist of the role of commons and radically decentralized individual action and collaboration in the production of information, knowledge and culture, as well as the organization of infrastructure.

Yochai’s work traverses a wide range of disciplines and sectors. It is taught in schools of law, business, and information sciences, and in departments of communications, media studies, computer science, economics, and political science. In real world applications, his work has been widely discussed in both the business sector and civil society.

His recent book, The Wealth of Networks (2006), and his earlier work, have won him awards from civil rights and social movement organizations, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award for 2007 and Public Knowledge's IP3 Award in 2006, and was called a “reveille for netizens" by The Times of London and “Internet utopianism for grown-ups” by The American Prospect. At the same time, Wealth of Networks has been called “perhaps the best work yet about the fast moving, enthusiast-driven Internet” by the Financial Times, and was named the best business book about the future in 2006 by Strategy and Business. His work has been the subject of reports in The Economist, BusinessWeek, and the Wall Street Journal, as well as general publications like the New York Times and Time magazine, exploring the implications of the emergence of networked information economy.

Stewart Brand
Author, Futurist, Activist and Visionary

Since he emerged in the counter-culture sixties, Stewart Brand has been a force in the world for giving access to the information needed to make the planet a better place.

He is a co-founder and managing director of Global Business Network, a scenario strategy consulting business and part of the Monitor Group, where he works with leading companies and public institutions on their futures.

Mr. Brand is the president of The Long Now Foundation. Brand is well known for founding, editing and publishing the Whole Earth Catalog (1968-85), which received a National Book Award for the 1972 issue. In 1984, he founded The WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), a computer teleconference system for the San Francisco Bay Area. It now has 11,000 active users worldwide and is considered a bellwether of the genre.

Brand has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Santa Fe Institute, an interdisciplinary center studying the sciences of complexity, since 1989. He received the Golden Gadfly Lifetime Achievement Award from the Media Alliance, San Francisco in the same year. He was a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization which supports civil rights and responsibilities in electronic media, and is an acting advisor to Ecotrust, the Portland-based preservers of temperate rain forests from Alaska to San Francisco.

Recently, he has advocated nuclear power as a responsible strategy to address power demand in the face of the stark reality of global warming. His seminal essay on this topic, entitled Environmental Heresies, appeared in the MIT Technology Review in May 2005.

Brand is the author of many pioneering books including The Clock Of The Long Now in 1999, How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built in 1994, The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT in 1987, and Two Cybernetic Frontiers on Gregory Bateson and cutting-edge computer science in 1974. It had the first use of the term "personal computer" in print and was the first book to report on computer hackers.

Larry Brilliant
Pioneering Physician and Philanthropist; President, Skoll Urgent Threats Fund

A self-described social change"addict," Dr. Larry Brilliant is a pioneering physician and global philanthropist. He is currently president of the Skoll Urgent Threats Fund, a new organization within the Skoll Foundation launched to address urgent threats confronting humanity and the planet. The focus of the organization is to identify and support innovative high-impact initiatives to combat climate change, water scarcity, pandemic, nuclear proliferation and Middle East conflict.

Prior to his appointment at The Skoll Foundation, Larry was the first executive director of Google.org, the company's philanthropic arm before becoming chief philanthropy evangelist for Google. An M.D., M.P.H., and board-certified in preventive medicine, epidemiology and public health, Larry was one of a four-person international team that led the successful World Health Organization smallpox eradication program in India and South Asia. He later founded the Seva Foundation of Berkeley, California, which works in dozens of countries around the world to eliminate preventable and curable blindness. Seva's projects have given back sight to nearly 3 million people. Last year, Time magazine named Brilliant one of the 20 most influential scientists and thinkers and one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

In addition to sitting on the board of the Skoll Foundation, Larry was elected to membership in the Council on Foreign Relations in 2009 and sits on the boards of Health Metrics Network and Omidyar Networks Humanity United.

Larry's work has been praised and awarded recognition throughout the last decade. In 2008, Brilliant was given a Global Leadership Award by the United Nations Organization. In 2006, he received the TED Prize. He was named "International Public Health Hero" by the University of California in 2004. He has also received numerous other awards, prizes and two honorary doctorates.

Peter Cappelli
Leading Authority on Managing Workplace Talent; Professor of Management, Wharton School

Recognized as one of the world’s most important authorities on human capital, Dr. Peter Cappelli is the George W. Taylor Professor of Management at the Wharton School and Director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources. His work focuses on human resource practices, talent and performance management, and public policy related to employment. He advises to organizations on the development of managerial and executive talent by helping his clients better understand how careers and career paths have changed, how these changes require companies to think about managing talent from a more strategic perspective, and how individuals should now think about managing their own careers.

Peter's more recent research examines changes in employment relations in the U.S. and their implications. Publications on the subject matter include, The New Deal at Work: Managing the Market-Driven Workforce, which examines the decline in lifetime employment relationships, Talent Management: Managing Talent in an Uncertain Age, which outlines the strategies that employers should consider in developing and managing talent (named a "best business book" for 2008 by Booz-Allen), and his most recent publication, The India Way: How India's Top Business Leaders are Revolutionizing Management, which describes a mission-driven and employee-focused approach to strategy and competitiveness.

Peter was named one of the 25 most influential people in the field of human capital by Vault.com and one of the top 100 people in the field of recruiting by Recruiter.com. Additionally, he was elected to the National Academy of Human Resources, and—in 2004—named editor of the Academy of Management Perspectives. He currently serves on commissions for The Business Roundtable, the World Economic Forum, and the U.S. Department of Labor.

Sir Richard Dearlove
Renowned Expert on Global Intelligence and Security

Sir Richard Dearlove has established himself as a scarce but in-demand commentator on the new century’s security threats. Only since his retirement as the Chief of British Intelligence in 2004 has he been able to dispose of his hard-won knowledge and experience for the benefit of private audiences. He still keeps an inquisitive media at arms length and refuses to write about his extraordinary career.

Sir Richard joined British Intelligence as a very young front-line officer in 1966 and worked extensively in Africa, behind the Iron Curtain, and in Europe. He experienced the Cold War at first hand and established his reputation quickly as a skillful spymaster. In his recent book, George Tenet describes him as the "spies spy."

Dearlove served as the British Intelligence representative in Washington during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, moving on to fill all of the key senior management roles in MI6, before his appointment in 1999 as ‘C’ (as the Chief of MI6 is known in British Government circles). He sensed early the changing nature of Intelligence work in the post-Cold War world and was radical in his approach to its restructuring, particularly in countering the growing terrorist threat.

At the center of the infamous leaked ‘Downing Street Memo,’ Sir Richard has had an insider’s view of key events and developments – 9/11, the continuing threat from Al Qaeda, Iraq, Afghanistan, the disarmament of Libya, the Iranian nuclear program—and he was of course an interlocutor of some of the leading players. His 38 years in Intelligence, and more than a decade in a leadership role, have given him a unique perspective on this closed and misinterpreted world.

Sir Richard is currently the Master of Pembroke College Cambridge, founded in 1347, one of Cambridge University’s leading teaching and research Colleges. He advises widely on risk and national security. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of AIG, senior advisor to the Monitor Group and Chairman of Ascot Underwriting at Lloyd’s of London. He was knighted by the Queen in 2001.

Joshua Epstein
Behavioral Scientist; Founder, Center on Social and Economic Dynamics, Brookings Institution

Josh Epstein is the Director of the Center on Social and Economic Dynamics at The Brookings Institution, and the author of Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up. He is a pioneer in the field of agent-based modeling approaches and has applied them to the front-burner problems facing Americans: War, Terrorism, Health, Disaster Preparedness, Immigration, the Future of Cities.

Josh is a natural teacher and a great entertainer. Using computer-generated simulations, he lucidly explains why the bottom-up approach to explaining social phenomena gives better results and why these tools are so powerful and broadly applicable. It’s as if Newton were explaining the power of his newly discovered Calculus to uncover the secrets of the physical world, but applied to societal systems like business organizations, cities, or political decision makers. Epstein illustrates this power with compelling discussions of a wide range of examples, chosen for relevance to the audience.

Princeton University Press recently published Josh’s Generative Social Science, a volume bringing together work ranging from organizational behavior in business to the rise and fall of the ancient Anasazi in the Southwest.

Ben Gomes-Casseres
Strategy and Alliance Expert

Ben Gomes-Casseres is an expert on global strategy, with a focus on business combinations. Ben consults, teaches, and speaks worldwide on international business, alliance strategy, and acquisition strategy. He has researched this topic for 20 years, taught it to MBAs and executives, and consulted with major companies in the United States and abroad. He is best known for his writings and consulting on alliance strategy, but he has also worked on international management, competitive strategy, technology policy, mergers and acquisitions, and organizational development.

Ben is currently a Professor at Brandeis International Business School, where he directs the MBA Program and the Asper Center for Global Entrepreneurship. Previously, he was a professor at the Harvard Business School and an economist at the World Bank. He is principal and owner of Alliance Strategy Consulting.

He has written or edited four books; his latest, Mastering Alliance Strategy: A Comprehensive Guide to Design, Management, and Organization, gives practical advice on how to use alliances as part of corporate strategy. His book The Alliance Revolution: The New Shape of Business Rivalry was one of the first in-depth studies of today’s high-tech alliances, and introduced the idea of competition among alliance “constellations.” His articles have appeared in Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, Strategy & Business, Sloan Management Review, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Financial Economics, and elsewhere. His work has been cited widely, including in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Harvard Management Update. He has also written numerous cases at Harvard Business School; his case on the development of Fuji Xerox in Japan is an HBS bestseller.

He holds a BA in History and Economics from Brandeis, an MPA in Economic Development from Princeton, and a DBA in International Business from Harvard. Born and raised in Curaçao (Netherlands Antilles), he speaks four languages (English, Dutch, Spanish, and Papiamentu), and is a dual citizen of the United States and the Netherlands.

Yukon Huang
Senior Advisor and Former Director, World Bank China Program

Yukon Huang is a noted expert on financial and development issues for emerging markets, with a focus on East Asia (China in particular) as well as the Former Soviet Union. He is currently a consultant and senior advisor to the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, various governments and private companies.

He was the World Bank’s first field based Country Director for China from 1997-2004 and from 1992-97 Director for Russia and Central Asia. As Director, he was responsible for the Bank’s two largest lending programs, which included developing, negotiating and supervising investment loans totaling over $20 billion. These involved some 100 projects ranging from major power systems, to financial restructuring and basic education. He also supervised a program of research and policy studies covering economic and financial issues for these countries.

From 2004 to 2006, as the Senior Advisor to the East Asia Vice-President, he managed a broad range of financial and development issues for East Asia.

In previous World Bank assignments he was responsible for overseeing the Bank’s overall lending and risk assessment policies and also served as Lead Economist and Country Operations Chief for Asia.

Prior to joining the Bank, Dr. Huang worked at the US Treasury on international economic issues and taught and conducted research at various universities in the United States, Asia and Africa.

His publications have included in-depth studies on a number of key emerging markets in Asia, Europe and Africa as well as fiscal and financial policies for developing countries more generally. His recent work includes a volume of country studies on how location and spatial factors have affected growth in East Asia (Reshaping Economic Geography in East Asia) and an edited collection of papers by noted specialists on the future of East Asia (East Asia Visions: Perspectives on Economic Development).

Dr. Huang received his B.A. in Economics from Yale University. His Masters and Ph.D. in Economics are from Princeton University.

Joel Kurtzman
Author, Advisor on Global Competitiveness
and Risk

Joel Kurtzman is a noted author and advisor to leading organizations around the world in the areas of social capital, governance, and assessing and managing global risk. His expertise is highlighted by his long, successful career forecasting global events, from oil-price shocks to the dollar’s ups and downs. Joel’s vantage point in understanding and relating business implications comes from the fact that he has held both positions of senior strategic business leader and journalist responsible for reporting and translating business issues. Whether presenting to business leaders or government officials, Joel presents his ideas with one overarching concept in mind: provide thought leadership that creates value and sustainable growth.

Mark Malloch Brown
Global Influencer of Change; Former Deputy Secretary-General, UN; Recent UK Foreign Minister

Mark Malloch Brown has had an enduring and distinguished career effecting change globally in both the private sector and the international political arena. He has successfully held the roles of journalist, business executive, development specialist, diplomat, philanthropist and political leader at the highest levels. He is well-known as an outspoken participant in debates on foreign policy, development, refugees, democracy and the reform of global governance. Drawing on his extensive career, Mark is currently working on two books focusing on Global Governance and Economic Development.

Until October of 2009, Mark was the Minister of State in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the British government with responsibility for Africa, Asia and the United Nations. During his tenure, he was the lead delegate on behalf of Prime Minister Gordon Brown responsible for maintaining and strengthening relationships with developing countries and managing global issues. He covered all foreign policy matters relating to those countries in the House of Lords. In his position, Mark sought to address longstanding United Kingdom foreign policy challenges in countries such as Sudan and Zimbabwe as well as developed new United Kingdom relationships in Asia.

Following his appointment, Malloch Brown was created a life peer on July 9, 2007 as Baron Malloch-Brown, of St Leonard's Forest in the County of West Sussex and took his seat in the House of Lords that same day.

Prior to his appointment to the UK cabinet, he was Vice-Chairman of The Soros Fund Management and The Open Society Institute. His work their involved developing a portfolio of investment opportunities for both for-profit and social investment.

From 1999 – 2006 Mark held several high level positions at the United Nations where he was extremely active in his service and cut a high profile. Before departing in 2006, he held the position of Deputy Secretary-General under Kofi Annan. In this role, he acted as the organization’s chief operating officer handling management reform and crisis communications matters as well as a range of policy functions. In addition, he was responsible to Security-General Annan for the overall global operations and leadership of the United Nations system. Before his position as Deputy-Secretary-General, Mark was the Administrator of the United Nations Development Program, the top development position in the United Nations. During his tenure at the UNDP, he oversaw a comprehensive reform effort that was widely recognized as making the UNDP more focused, efficient and effective across the 166 countries where it works and doubled its annual resources to over $4 billion. His efforts included a major push to expand UN support to developing countries in areas such as democratic governance, a new advocacy dimension as reflected in pioneering publications, including the Arab Human Development Reports, and strengthened UNDP operational leadership in natural disasters and post-conflict situations.

Prior to his appointment with the UNDP, Mark served at the World Bank as Vice-President for External Affairs. He is credited with having helped the Bank enhance its outreach and expand its partnership with the United Nations and non-governmental organizations. In 1997, he chaired the United Nations Secretary-General's task force on the reform of United Nations communications.

Before joining the World Bank, Mark was the lead international partner in the strategic communications management firm, the Sawyer-Miller Group, where he worked with corporations and governments. He advised Corazon Aquino of the Philippines when she ran against Ferdinand Marcos, as well as other presidential and political candidates, particularly in Latin America.

He founded The Economist Development Report, a monthly report on the aid community and the political economy for development. He served as the Report's editor from 1983 to 1986. Previously, from 1977 to 1979, he had been the political correspondent of The Economist.

Included in Time Magazine’s world’s 100 most influential people in 2005, Mark’s early vocation was a pre-cursor to the work he has championed throughout his career. Working with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), he was stationed in Thailand, where he was in charge of field operations for Cambodian refugees. He was appointed Deputy Chief of UNHCR's Emergency Unit in Geneva, undertaking extensive missions in the Horn of Africa and Central America. In 1981, the UNHCR and its staff were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Active in human rights and refugee issues, he formerly served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Refugees International in Washington, D.C., and has served on the advisory boards of a number of non-profit organizations.

Mark received a First Class Honour’s Degree in History from Magdalene College, Cambridge University, and a Master's Degree in Political Science from the University of Michigan, and is the recipient of a number of honorary degrees and awards. He is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.

Michael Porter
Seminal Authority on Competitive Strategy

Michael E. Porter is indisputably the foremost authority on modern competitive strategy.

Generally recognized as the father of the modern strategy field, Professor Porter has been identified in a variety of rankings and surveys as the world’s most influential thinker on management and competitiveness. His expertise spans competitive strategy, the competitiveness and economic development of nations, states, and regions, and the application of competitive principles to social problems such as health care, the environment, and corporate responsibility.

He is the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor, based at Harvard Business School. A University professorship is the highest professional recognition that can be awarded to a Harvard faculty member. In 2001, Harvard Business School and Harvard University jointly created the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, dedicated to furthering Professor Porter’s work.

He is the author of 17 books and over 125 articles, including his seminal works: “The Competitive Advantage of Nations,” which has guided economic policy in countless nations and regions; and “Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors,” in its 63rd printing and which has been translated into 19 languages. His book "Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results" (2006; Harvard Business Press) is influencing thinking and practice not only in the United States but numerous other countries. "On Competition" (Harvard Business Press) was re-issued with new and expanded content in October 2008. Professor Porter has received six McKinsey Awards for the best Harvard Business Review article of the year, including an unprecedented four first-place awards.

Professor Porter has served as a strategy advisor to top management in numerous leading U.S. and international companies, among them Caterpillar, DuPont, Procter & Gamble, Royal Dutch Shell, Scotts Miracle-Gro, SYSCO, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. He currently serves on the board of directors of Thermo Fisher Scientific Corporation and Parametric Technology Corporation, and is senior strategy advisor to the Boston Red Sox.

He is actively involved in assisting governments and advising national leaders in the U.S. and abroad, including Armenia, Ireland, India, Kazakhstan, Libya, Nicaragua, Portugal, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.
The Latin American Center for Competitiveness and Sustainable Development is based on his thinking about economic development for groups of neighboring countries.

Extending his work on competitiveness to states, provinces, and other sub-national regions, Professor Porter led the Clusters of Innovation project, which developed a framework for economic policy in U.S. regions. In addition, he is dedicated to addressing the relationship between competition and important social issues such as poverty, health care delivery and the natural environment. He has devoted growing attention toward economically distressed communities and poor and developing countries.

Professor Porter founded three major non-profit organizations: The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), the Center for Effective Philanthropy, and FSG-Social Impact Advisors. He also currently serves on the Princeton University Board of Trustees.

He received a B.S.E. with high honors in aerospace and mechanical engineering from Princeton University in 1969, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi. He received an M.B.A. with high distinction in 1971 from the Harvard Business School, where he was a George F. Baker Scholar, and a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University in 1973.

Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Professor Porter lived and traveled throughout the world as the son of a career Army officer. At Princeton, he played intercollegiate golf and was the New England champion. He was named to the 1968 NCAA Golf All-American Team. After graduating from college, Professor Porter served through the rank of captain in the U.S. Army Reserve. He maintains a long-time interest in the esthetics and business of music and art, having worked on the problems of strategy with arts organizations and aspiring musicians. Professor Porter has two daughters and resides in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Iqbal Quadir
Entrepreneur, Founder of GrameenPhone, Philanthropist

Iqbal Z. Quadir is the founder and director of the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which promotes bottom-up entrepreneurship in developing countries.

Quadir is an accomplished entrepreneur who writes about the critical roles of entrepreneurship and innovations in improving the economic and political conditions in low-income countries. Quadir is often credited as having been the earliest observer of the potential for mobile phones to transform low-income countries. His work has been recognized by leaders and organizations worldwide as a new and successful approach to sustainable poverty alleviation.

For four years, Quadir taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, focusing on the impact of technologies in the politics and economics of developing countries. In 2005, he moved to MIT. His particular research interest is in the democratizing effects of technologies in developing countries with some of his initial thoughts published in the Summer/Fall 2002 issue of The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs.

In 2006, Quadir co-founded the journal Innovations, published by MIT Press, which highlights private efforts in public service. Quadir spent most of the 1990s founding and building GrameenPhone Ltd., which has now become Bangladesh’s largest telephone company, with net income of $250 million in 2006. His childhood exposure to the conditions in rural Bangladesh combined with his later venture capital experience in New York led Quadir to recognize that the ensuing digital revolution could facilitate the introduction of telephony to 100 million people living in rural Bangladesh. In 1994, he formally launched this effort by convincing angel investors to establish a New York based company, Gonofone Development Corp (meaning “phones for the masses”) to help him organize what subsequently became known as GrameenPhone.

Quadir’s vision of a large-scale, commercial project that could serve all urban areas and 68,000 villages in Bangladesh led him to organize a global consortium including Telenor AS, the primary telephone company in Norway and an affiliate of micro-credit pioneer Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. He attracted these investors by complementing his vision with a practical distribution scheme whereby small entrepreneurs, backed by loans from Grameen Bank, could retail telephone services to their surrounding communities. With the support of these investors, GrameenPhone, established in late 1996, started building a new cellular network and providing services to the public soon thereafter. To date, it has built the largest cellular network in the country with investments of nearly $2 billion and a subscriber base of nearly 20 million. Its rural program is already available in more than 60,000 villages, providing telephone access to more than 100 million people, while helping to create 250,000 micro-entrepreneurs in these villages.

Quadir appeared on CBC, CNN and PBS and was profiled in feature articles in The Economist, Boston Globe, Financial Times and The New York Times, and in several books. The World Economic Forum, based in Geneva, Switzerland, selected him as a “Global Leader for Tomorrow.” In 2006, Quadir was awarded the prestigious Science, Education and Economic Development (SEED) award in Bangladesh. In spring 2007, Wharton Alumni Magazine selected Quadir for its list of 125 Influential People and Ideas on the occasion of the 125-year celebration of the Wharton School. His work is referred to in 20 books and is prominently featured in the 2007 book, You Can Hear Me Now, by Nicholas Sullivan (Jossey-Bass).

Earlier in his career, Quadir served as a vice president of Atrium Capital Corp., an associate of Security Paciﬁc Merchant Bank, both in New York, and a consultant to the World Bank in Washington DC. He received an MBA and an MA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and a BS with honors from Swarthmore College.

AnnaLee Saxenian
Authority on Technology Clusters and Global Innovation; Dean, School of Information, UC Berkeley

AnnaLee Saxenian has made a career of studying regional economics and the conditions under which people, ideas, and geographies combine and connect into hubs of economic activity. Her latest book, The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy (Harvard University Press, 2006) explores how and why immigrant engineers from Silicon Valley have transferred the institutions of technology entrepreneurship to emerging regions in their home countries—Taiwan, Israel, China and India in particular—and launching companies far from established centers of skill and technology. The “brain drain,” she argues, has now become “brain circulation”— a powerful economic force for the development of formerly peripheral regions that is sparking profound transformations in the global economy.

AnnaLee is dean and professor at the U.C. Berkeley School of Information and a professor in Berkeley’s department of city and regional planning. Her prior publications include Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (Harvard, 1994), Silicon Valley's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs (Public Policy Institute of California, 1999), and Local and Global Networks of Immigrant Professionals in Silicon Valley (PPIC, 2002). She holds a PhD in political science from MIT, a master's in regional planning from U.C. Berkeley, and a BA in economics from Williams College.

Peter Schwartz
World-Renowned Futurist and Strategist

Peter Schwartz is co-founder and current chairman of the Global Business Network (GBN), the world’s preeminent member organization focused on scenario thinking and planning, where he leads programs for corporations, governments, and non-profit institutions. His current research and scenario work encompasses energy resources and the environment, technology, life sciences, telecommunications, media and entertainment, aerospace, and national security. A prolific author, Peter’s most recent book, Inevitable Surprises, offers a provocative look at the complex forces at play in the world today and their implications for business and society. His first book, The Art of the Long View, is considered a seminal publication on scenario planning and has been translated into multiple languages. Peter addresses many different audiences in corporate board rooms, at conferences on issues such as global warming and human life extension, and at the World Economic Forum. He led the scenario team at Royal Dutch/Shell in the 1980s, where many of the scenario tools were pioneered. He has even lent his futurist skills to Hollywood as a script consultant on such films as The Minority Report, Deep Impact, Sneakers, and War Games.

Leo Tilman
Advisor to CEOs, Financial Market Strategist, Authority on Risk Management

Called "The Man Who Predicted This Crisis" by CNN International, Leo Tilman is a widely recognized authority on financial markets and risk management. Leo is the President of L.M. Tilman & Co., a strategic advisory firm that serves governments, financial institutions, corporations, and institutional investors worldwide. L.M. Tilman & Co. helps its clients create real and lasting economic value in finance. Prior to founding the firm, Mr. Tilman held senior positions with BlackRock as well as Bear Stearns, where he was Chief Institutional Strategist and Senior Managing Director.

Mr. Tilman teaches finance at Columbia University—his graduate as well as undergraduate alma mater. He is the author of Financial Darwinism: Create Value or Self-Destruct in a World of Risk, co-author of The Risk Paradigm (forthcoming 2009), co-author of Risk Management, and editor of Asset/Liability Management of Financial Institutions.

Mr. Tilman is a contributing editor of The Journal of Risk Finance and a frequent speaker at leading business schools and conferences worldwide. He serves on the advisory board of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University and on the board of directors of Atlantic Partnership. Mr. Tilman was honored by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader, joining a select group of executives, public figures and intellectuals recognized for “their professional accomplishments, commitment to society and potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world.”

Paul Van Zyl
Global Leader and Advisor on Transitional Justice & Human Rights

Paul van Zyl is a co-founder and the Executive Vice-President of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), an organization which assists countries pursuing accountability for past mass atrocity or human rights abuse. The ICTJ was founded in 2001 in response to a growing recognition that facing legacies of past abuse and injustice is crucial to promoting human rights around the world. By helping to address past crimes, transitional justice can help to break vicious cycles of violence and reduce the likelihood of future conflict.

Mr. van Zyl has acted as an adviser and consultant to human rights organizations, governments, international organizations, and foundations on transitional justice issues in numerous countries. From 1995 to 1998, he served as Executive Secretary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, helping to establish the Commission, develop its structure and modus operandi and manage its operations. He has also worked as a researcher for the Goldstone Commission, as a department head at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in Johannesburg, and as an associate at Davis Polk and Wardwell in New York.

Throughout his career, Mr. van Zyl has received a number of academic and professional honors. He has been selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, joining a group of extraordinary leaders under 40 who dedicate their time and energy to working towards a better global future. He was also selected as a TED Fellow, and was named as one of New York’s “Top 15 Lawyers Under 40” by New York Lawyer Magazine.

Mr. van Zyl also currently serves as director of New York University School of Law’s Transitional Justice Program, and teaches law both in New York and Singapore. He obtained a BA and an LLB from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and an LLM in International Law from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Following these studies, he was accepted into the prestigious Hauser Global Scholars Program at New York University School of Law, where he completed a LLM in Corporate Law.

Ruth Wasserman Lande
Expert on Middle East and Foreign Policy

Ruth Wasserman Lande's personal history, education, and impressive professional experience make her uniquely qualified to advise governments, corporations, and NGOs on Middle East-related issues. Formerly, the advisor to Israel President, Mr. Shimon Peres, Ruth is currently working on her Ph.D. on Middle East issues, specifically "Israeli-Egyptian Relations 1979-2009: The Palestinian Dimension," at the University of Oxford. She is also Founder and Director of Public Relations and Media for the Lod Community Foundation which strives to develop one of the poorest, mixed Jewish-Arab cities in Israel.

The focus of Ruth’s work spans a broad spectrum including Arab-Israeli relations, US-Israeli strategic alliances, cross-cultural negotiation, and counterterrorism and nonproliferation. She is also passionate about the role women must play in the quest for peace in the Middle East. Ruth is committed to closing the gaps in the global religious and cultural divide. Her approach may help others better understand the myriad of interconnected issues that impact business, economics, culture, and politics in the region.

Ruth was born in Israel and raised in Cape Town, South Africa. She returned to Israel as a teenager and graduated, Cum Laude, from Bar Ilan University with a degree in International Relations and Communications. After completing her studies, she served as a political analyst in the Israeli Defense Force intelligence, rising to the rank of Captain.

Following military service, Ruth joined the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she served as the desk officer for the UK, Ireland, and Scandinavia. She was promoted to Advisor to the Deputy Director General for Strategic Affairs in the Foreign Ministry, dealing with counter-terrorism and counter-proliferation issues. During this time, she earned a Master of Arts (Cum Laude) in International Relations from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She received the “Simcha Pratt Prize” for excellence on a paper analyzing the Oslo Negotiations, and her reputation led to a three-year appointment as the political and economic advisor in the Israeli embassy in Cairo. She completed her service there as the acting Deputy Chief of Mission.

In 2006, Ruth was awarded a Wexner Fellowship to study at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she earned another master’s degree before assuming her position with President Peres’s office.

Ruth speaks fluent Hebrew, English, Russian, and Arabic, as well as conversational French.

Ruth Lande with President Peres

Ruth with the President of the State of Israel, Mr. Shimon Peres

Lande with President Obama

Ruth with the President of the United States, Mr. Barack Obama

Steve Weber
Political Economist and Critically Acclaimed Author

Steve Weber is professor of political science at UC Berkeley, where he directs the multi-disciplinary Institute of International Studies. His research and consulting work consistently breaks new ground in areas as diverse as health care telecommunications, U.S. foreign and intelligence policy, software markets, and the emerging geopolitical issues of the 21st century, particularly around Sino-American relations. His advisory work has benefited organizations as diverse as IBM, the CIA, The Ford Foundation, Chiron, and the Library of Congress. His most recent book, The Success of Open Source, is an internationally acclaimed study of the political economy of the open source software community (2004 Winner of the Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Award Competition, Computer and Information Science).

Terry F. Yosie
Thought Leader on Sustainable Business Practice

Terry Yosie joined the World Environment Center in October 2006 as the President & CEO. In this capacity, he develops and implements strategies to achieve this global non-profit organization’s mission to implement sustainable development through the business strategies and operations of global companies in partnership with government agencies, non-governmental organizations, universities and other stakeholders. WEC’s principal areas of focus have included climate change and energy efficiency, enterprise development, greening the supply chain and technological innovation. Dr. Yosie leads WEC’s global initiatives and frequently meets with business, government and other leaders to develop solutions to a variety of environmental, economic and social issues.

Dr. Yosie has held senior-level management positions in government, corporate and consulting organizations. He served as Vice President at the American Chemistry Council from 1999-2005, providing leadership to upgrade the chemical industry’s environmental, health, safety and security performance. He managed a global CEO Task Force in 2004-2005 to develop the Responsible Care Global Charter to improve chemical industry performance in 52 countries. He represented the industry as a delegate to the 2002 U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

As the Executive Vice President of Ruder Finn Washington from 1992-1999, Dr. Yosie led the environmental management and communications practices of the firm for a wide range of clients such as BASF, British Petroleum, Pfizer, and Philips Electronics. At BP, he advised the company on climate change issues that led to a new strategy announced in 1997 by the CEO John Browne.

Dr. Yosie served as Vice President for Health and Environment at the American Petroleum Institute from 1988-1992. In this capacity, he successfully led the industry’s effort to negotiate cleaner fuel standards with EPA, state and local agencies and environmental organizations that impacted over $40 billion dollars in refining investments.

From 1978-1988, Dr. Yosie was employed at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board where he also served as Director from 1981-1988, In this role, he advised EPA Administrators and the U.S. Congress on the scientific basis of public health and environmental decisions, and he instituted policies and procedures to improve the technical basis for EPA-wide policy decisions and risk assessments. He was a member of the U.S. delegation for the bilateral environmental program with the Soviet Union and negotiated diverse agreements with that country.

Dr. Yosie has recently served as a member of the National Research Council Committee that published a major study, Science and Decisions (December 2008). He is the author of more than sixty professional publications and co-editor of a book entitled, Sustainable Environmental Management. He received his doctorate degree in Humanities and Social Sciences from Carnegie Mellon University in 1981 and has been designated by the University as one of its Most Notable Alumni.

Ethan Zuckerman
Fellow, The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law; Founder, Global Voices

Ethan Zuckerman is an activist, academic and engineer whose work focuses on technology in the developing world. In 2004, he co-founded Global Voices, an award-winning international citizen media network. Global Voices maintains an online newsroom, which reports from over 100 nations via weblogs and a translation network that publishes content in 12 languages. Global Voices offers trainings in citizen medium podcasting and videocasting throughout the developing world, and runs an advocacy project that supports free speech online. Ethan became a fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School in January, 2003. His work at Berkman focuses on the impact of technology on the developing world. His current projects include a study of global media attention, research on the use of weblogs and other social software in the developing world, and the use of web 2.0 technologies by activists.

Prior to his work at Harvard, Ethan was involved with founding several internet start-ups. He helped co-found Tripod, an early pioneer in the web community space. Ethan served as Tripod's first graphic designer and developer, and later as VP of Business Development and VP of Research and Development. After Tripod's acquisition by Lycos in 1998, Ethan served as General Manager of the Angelfire.com division and as a member of the Lycos mergers and acquisitions team. Ethan then went on to found Geekcorps, a non profit group that provided technology assitance to governments and companies in the developing world.

Ethan graduated from Williams College with a BA in Philosophy in 1993. In 1993-4, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Legon, Ghana and the National Theatre of Ghana, studying ethnomusicology and percussion.

Ethan was given the 2002 Technology in Service of Humanity Award by MIT's Technology Review Magazine and named to the TR100, TR's list of innovators under the age of 35. In 2004, Ethan was named a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum.

He lives the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts with his wife Rachel. He serves on the boards of regional and international organizations that focus on technology and education, including on the sub-boards of the Open Society Institute's Information Program and US Program.

Search Results

find more talent