Panelists
Ehaab Dyaa Abdou, MENA Development Marketplace, World Bank Institute
Iman Bibars, Vice President, Ashoka Global, and Regional Director, Ashoka Arab World
Karl Brown, Associate Director, Rockefeller Foundation
Salo Coslovsky, Assistant Professor of International Development, Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service, New York University
Trina DasGupta, Director, mWomen Program, GSMA
Joaquim de Melo, Founder and CEO, Instituto Palmas
Chrystia Freeland, Journalist, Thomsonreuters
Antara Haldar, Post-Doctoral Research Scholar, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University
Michael Hofmann, Director, LKS Climate, Spain
Robert C. Lieberman, Interim Dean, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Jose Antonio Ocampo, Director, Economic and Political Development concentration, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Maura O'Neill, Senior Counselor to the Administrator for Innovation, USAID
Mitchell Orenstein, Associate Professor, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies
Lynn Parramore, Media Consultant
Nohra Rey de Marulanda, Independent Consultant, Integration and Regional Programs Department, Inter-American Development Bank
Tina Rosenberg, Journalist, NY Times
Anya Schiffrin, Director, International Media, Advocacy and Communications specialization, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Fumitsugu Tosu, Co-President, Table For Two
Kentaro Toyama, Researcher, School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley
Fabio Veras Soares, Researcher and Coordinator, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG), and Researcher, Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), Brasilia
Katrin Verclas, Co-founder, MobileActive.org
Ehaab Dyaa Abdou
MENA Development Marketplace, World Bank Institute
Ehaab Dyaa Abdou joined the World Bank Institute (WBI) in August 2011 to help design and launch the Egypt Development Marketplace. Prior to joining WBI, Ehaab worked as an advisor for the Middle East Youth Initiative at the Brookings Institution since July 2009, where he helped develop and lead an action-oriented social entrepreneurship program. He is co-author of the report "Social Entrepreneurship in the Middle East: Toward Sustainable Development for the Next Generation" (Silatech, Dubai School of Government and Wolfensohn Center for Development at Brookings, April 2010) and author of "A Practitioner's Guide for Social Entrepreneurs in Egypt and the Arab Region" (Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement at the American University in Cairo, October 2010).
In 2004, Ehaab was selected as an Ashoka fellow. He is co-founder and board member of the Egyptian youth-led NGO Nahdet El Mahrousa, the first incubator for innovative social enterprises in Egypt and the Middle East. In 2007, he helped co-found the Ana Masry (I’m Egyptian) musical band, which aims to promote the values of tolerance and diversity, national unity and citizenship in Egypt. He currently serves as the chairperson of the US-based Ana Masry Foundation Inc.. Ehaab earned his master’s degree in international development from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and his undergraduate degree in management from the American University in Cairo in 1997.
Iman Bibars
Vice President, Ashoka Global, and Regional Director, Ashoka Arab World
Iman Bibars is the Vice President of Ashoka Global and the Regional Director of Ashoka Arab World. Under her tenure, the concept of social entrepreneurship has been introduced to the Middle East and North Africa. Dr. Bibars is an international development expert with twenty-five years of experience working in her native Egypt, the wider Middle East, North Africa, and the US. She worked for the World Bank, UNDP, the Government of the Netherlands and a wide array of local and international NGOs. Dr Bibars is a co-founder and chairwoman of The Association for the Development and Enhancement of Women, an NGO that provides credit and legal aid for poor women. She has published a number of books on gender issues, including "The Women of Tahrir" which details the most recent experiences of Egyptian women during the revolution.
Karl Brown
Associate Director, Rockefeller Foundation
Karl Brown joined the Rockefeller Foundation in 2006. As Associate Director of Applied Technology, Mr. Brown is focused on the intersection of information technology with the initiatives of the Foundation, and he works on exploring and nurturing imaginative uses of technology by Rockefeller grantees. Mr. Brown is the focal point for the Foundation's work on eHealth as part of the Transforming Health Systems initiative. Prior to joining the Rockefeller Foundation, Mr. Brown worked as the Chief Technical Officer of GNVC, an NGO that fostered entrepreneurship in Ghana. Previously, Mr. Brown was a technical team lead with Trilogy, where he developed and deployed enterprise systems and consumer-facing websites for Fortune 500 companies such as Ford and Nissan. Mr. Brown received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Stanford University and a Master of International Affairs from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs.
Salo Coslovsky
Assistant Professor of International Development, Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service, New York University
Salo Coslovsky is an Assistant Professor of International Development at the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University. His research bridges international development, legal sociology, and organizational behavior, and asks how developing countries can promote sustainable and equitable growth even when subjected to intense global competition. His dissertation examined how Brazilian prosecutors enforce labor and environmental laws so as to enhance business competitiveness. He has also studied how global buyers and private auditors influence labor practices in the sugar and ethanol supply chain. Coslovsky is additionally interested in forest-based industries in the Amazon, and was awarded MIT's Siegel Prize for Best Essay in Science, Technology and Society for research on this topic. His work has been funded by MIT's Department of Urban Studies, the Sloan School of Management, the Martin Society for Sustainability, and the World Bank. Coslovsky has also been advising Brazilian think-tanks and government agencies, including the Ministry of Environment, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Forest Service on matters of policy design and implementation. He received an M.A. in Law and Diplomacy from Tufts University; and a Ph.D. in International Development from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Trina DasGupta
Director, mWomen Program, GSMA
Trina DasGupta is the mWomen Program Director for the GSMA, which represents the interests of the worldwide mobile communications industry. As the head of the GSMA mWomen Program, Trina manages an unprecedented, global, public-private partnership between the mobile industry, governments and the international development community. Launched by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the program aims to reduce the mobile phone gender gap and bring women life-enhancing services, such as health care and education, via the mobile channel. Key to this effort, Trina is working with mobile industry partners on the design of the women's consumer segment in emerging markets. Prior to the GSMA, Trina worked with South Africa’s largest HIV prevention NGO, loveLife, to create the world’s first mobile-based social network centered on youth empowerment and HIV prevention. Trina is also a regular consultant for consumer brands, non-profits, and political organizations. Her clients have included Sesame Workshop, the Kaiser Family Foundation, Voxiva Inc. and the Democratic National Committee. Before consulting, Trina worked for MTV Networks as the Manager of Integrated Marketing and New Business Development, developing creative concepts that brought in over $31 million in new revenue in less than two years. In that role, her clients included Coca-Cola, Cingular/AT&T, Dunkin’ Donuts, Intel, JCPenney, Kohl’s, Sharpie, and Starburst, among many other top consumer brands. She has also worked on Viacom and MTV International’s sexual health campaigns, Know HIV/AIDS and Staying Alive. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with degrees from the Wharton School of Business and the Annenberg School of Communications.
Joaquim de Melo
Founder and CEO, Instituto Palmas
João Joaquim de Melo Neto is a local teacher (educador popular), community leader and theologist. In 1998, he founded Banco Palmas, the first Community Development Bank (CDB) in the history of Brazil, dedicated to community development in accordance with the principles of solidarity economy. After the success of the initiative he decided to create Instituto Palmas de Desenvolvimento e Socioeconomia Solidária, whose mission is to disseminate the experience and technology of Banco Palmas all over Brazil, where there are now 67 Community Development Banks. He is currently the coordinator of Institute Palmas and the Brazilian Network of Community Development Banks.
Chrystia Freeland
Journalist, Thomson Reuters
Chrystia Freeland is the Editor of Thomson Reuters. Prior, she served as the U.S. Managing Editor of the Financial Times. She also held positions as Deputy Editor of Financial Times in London, Editor of the FT’s Weekend edition, Editor of FT.com, U.K. News Editor, Moscow Bureau Chief and Eastern Europe Correspondent. From 1999 to 2001, she served as Deputy Editor of the Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper. Her career began in Ukraine writing for the Financial Times, the Washington Post and the Economist.
Antara Haldar
Post-Doctoral Research Scholar, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University
Antara Haldar received her PhD in Law from Trinity College, University of Cambridge in 2010. She has studied both law and economics, holding a BA in Economics from St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi (2004) and a BA in Law from Trinity College, University of Cambridge (2006). Her doctoral research critically examined the importance of formal property rights for economic development using two prominent credit access programs targeted at poverty alleviation - land-titling in Peru and microfinance in Bangladesh. More fundamentally, it used the two programs as a means of exploring the analytics of formal versus informal law. In her postdoctoral research, she embarked on a new project to study the interactive dynamics of formal and informal law as played out in the recent financial crisis - constructing case studies based on events in both the US and the UK. This helped to generate deeper theoretical insights into the relationship between formal and informal law. Antara has been involved in high-level research projects like the American Bar Association's World Justice Project and the Initiative for Policy Dialogue's China Task Force. In addition, she has worked with internationally renowned policy experts in India, Canada and South Africa and in the process, has been involved in important legal activism projects and contributed to crucial legislative reform. Antara has been the recipient of numerous academic grants and awards, including the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Scholarship and a grant from the Cambridge Political Economy Society. She has also been nominated to a Research Associateship at the Centre for Business Research (CBR) at Cambridge University, and at the London Centre for Corporate Governance and Ethics at Birkbeck College, London. Her other research interests extend to jurisprudence, international law and feminist legal theory.
Michael Hofmann
Director, LKS Climate, Spain
Michael Hofmann is Director of LKS Climate where he is responsible for all climate change and carbon-related global activities of LKS. His 15-year professional experience spans international, multi-disciplinary, and multilingual environments in Europe, Africa, South America and Asia. Mr. Hofmann's expertise includes renewable energy, sustainability, carbon management, climate change and carbon market-related projects for commercial, governmental and not-for-profit organizations. He worked for the Political NATO Headquarters in Brussels; Energética, a not-for-profit sustainable development and renewable energy organization based in Bolivia; the Ministry for Infrastructure and Energy (MININFRA) in Rwanda; and Camco Advisory Services Ltd., a leading global climate change, carbon market and sustainability company in London. Mr. Hofmann has managed numerous projects, examples of which are assessing socio-economic impacts and regulatory framework requirements for a Solar PV feed-in tariff in South Africa; and socio-economic and technical pre-feasibility and feasibility work for solar, biomass, wind and hydro energy projects in the UK, Rwanda and Bolivia. Mr. Hofmann studied in England, Singapore and Scotland and holds bachelor's and master's degrees in Business Economics with Computing and Renewable Energy Development. He is a Visiting Lecturer at Hult International Business School in London where he teaches the module ‘Sustainability’ as part of the Master of Social Entrepreneurship program.
Robert C. Lieberman
Interim Dean, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Robert C. Lieberman is one of the nation’s foremost experts on American political development, race and politics, and social welfare policy and the welfare state. He has served as Interim Dean of SIPA since February 2012. He previously served as Vice Dean (2009 – 2010 and 2011 – 2012), and Chairman of the Department of International and Public Affairs (2007 – 2012). Dr. Lieberman has taught at SIPA and in Columbia's Department of Political Science since 1994. A focal point of DR. Lieberman’s work at SIPA has been a reimagining of global public policy education – crafting a new category of intellectual endeavor and new styles of policy instruction for the 21st century. In 2011, Dr. Lieberman convened an international conference on the future of global public policy education to consider its core mission as a field, focusing on intellectual foundations, curriculum, and research. He has been instrumental in the recruitment and appointment of internationally accomplished faculty to SIPA. He also co-chaired the 2009 restructuring of SIPA’s curriculum, which added new public, nonprofit, and financial managenent courses. Dr. Lieberman has served as a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation and received fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and the American Philosophical Society. He earned his BA from Yale University, and his MA and PhD from Harvard University.
José Antonio Ocampo
Director, Economic and Political Development concentration, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
José Antonio Ocampo is Director of the Economic and Political Development concentration at SIPA and a fellow of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. In 2008-2010, he also served as co-director of the UNDP/OAS Project on an “Agenda for a Citizens’ Democracy in Latin America”, and in 2009 as a Member of the Commission of Experts of the UN General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System. Prior to his appointment, Dr. Ocampo served in a number of positions in the United Nations and the Government of Colombia, most notably as United Nations Under-Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs; Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC); Minister of Finance and Public Credit, Chairman of the Board of Banco del República (Central Bank of Colombia); Director, National Planning Department (Minister of Planning); Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, and Executive Director of Fedesarrollo. Dr. Ocampo has published extensively on macroeconomic theory and policy, international financial issues, economic and social development, international trade, and Colombian and Latin American economic history. Dr. Ocampo received his BA in economics and sociology from the University of Notre Dame and his PhD in economics from Yale University.
Maura O'Neill
Senior Counselor to the Administrator for Innovation, USAID
Maura O’Neill is Senior Counselor to the Administrator and Chief Innovation Officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development where she is responsible for driving innovation in development as well as public-private partnerships in the Agency. Dr. O'Neill has co-led USAID Forward, the Agency's worldwide reform effort. Breakthrough innovations in mobile, climate change, election fraud, maternal mortality, financial inclusion and disaster and reconstruction response have been hallmarks. She also serves on the White House Innovation Cohort. In the public, private, and academic sectors, Dr. O’Neill has focused on creating entrepreneurial and public policy solutions for some of the world’s toughest problems in the fields of energy, education and infrastructure financing. Dr. O’Neill has started four companies in the field of energy efficiency and curbside recycling, utility billing and metering services including smart grid, internet applications and digital education. In addition, she has advised and invested in dozens more including participating in a Broadway syndicate for two Tony-nominated musicals. She was named the Greater Seattle Business Person of the Year in 1989. Dr. O’Neill was appointed in 2009 as Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor for Energy and Climate at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and in 2008 was Chief of Staff for U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA). Dr. O’Neill graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. from the University of Washington. She received an MBA from Columbia University and University of California at Berkeley, and her PhD from the University of Washington.
Mitchell Orenstein
Associate Professor, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
Mitchell Orenstein is the S. Richard Hirsch Associate Professor of European Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Dr. Orenstein has held academic positions at several universities including Brown, Yale and Moscow State universities, University of Oxford, John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Institute for EastWest Studies. Formerly, he served as Director of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan European Research Centers at Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University; and worked as consultant to World Bank Social Protection Division and USAID. He was awarded fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and International Research and Exchange Board, and received the American Political Science Association's 1997 Gabriel A. Almond Award for best doctoral dissertation in comparative politics. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Yale University.
Lynn Parramore
Media Consultant
Lynn Parramore, an author, cultural theorist, producer, and media consultant, is founding editor of New Deal 2.0, a signature project of the Roosevelt Institute. She is also a co-founder Recessionwire.com, which highlights news, cultural analysis, and entertainment around the economic downturn, and a founding editor of IgoUgo.com, the largest database of first-hand travel reviews on the Web. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, the Miami Herald, Forbes Traveler, the New York Daily News, Mother Jones, The Nation, and USA Today. She acted as media consultant to Harvey Gantt in his campaign for U.S. Senate in 1996. Dr. Parramore’s first book of cultural history, "Reading the Sphinx", was recognized by the Chronicle of Higher Education as a notable scholarly book for 2009. She holds a PhD in English from New York University, where she received a teaching fellowship and taught essay writing and cultural theory.
Nohra Rey de Marulanda
Independent Consultant
Nohra Rey de Marulanda is currently an independent international consultant. Since 2007, she has worked for the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC), the International Fellowship Program of the Ford Foundation, and the Secretaría General Ibero Americana (SEGIB). In 1994, she became Manager of the Trade, Integration and Regional Programs of the Inter-American Development Bank where she founded and directed the Inter-American Institute for Social Development (INDES), which provided training in the design and management of social policies, programs and projects. From 1989 to 1994, she served as the Manager of the Department of Economic and Social Development at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Washington DC. Previously, Mrs. Rey de Marulanda served as Deputy Minister for Planning and Colombia’s Trade Representative and the Technical Secretary of the National Council for Economic and Social Policy in Colombia. She also served on the Monetary Board of the Central Bank. She held academic positions at the University of the Andes in Colombia as a Director of the Graduate Program in Economics, and a Director of the Center for Economic Development. She also taught at St. Antony's College in Oxford. Mrs. Rey de Marulanda is a founding member of the Centro Internacional de Pensamiento Economico y Social (CISOE). She holds a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Sussex, England.
Tina Rosenberg
Journalist, NY Times
Tina Rosenberg is an editorial writer for The New York Times and she also frequently writes for The New York Times Magazine. In 1987, she won a MacArthur Fellowship, which she used to move to South America. Her experiences there led to her first work, "Children of Cain: Violence and the Violent in Latin America". Her work has appeared in The New Republic, The New Yorker, and the Washington Post. She is a fellow at the World Policy Institute, and won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, as well as a National Book Award in 1995 for her book "The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism", which describes the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. Rosenberg received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Northwestern University.
Anya Schiffrin
Director, International Media, Advocacy and Communications specialization, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Anya Schiffrin is Director of SIPA's International Media, Advocacy and Communications (IMAC) Specialization. She spent 10 years working overseas as a journalist in Europe and Asia, writing for a number of different magazines and newspapers. She was bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires in Amsterdam and Hanoi and wrote regularly for the Wall Street Journal. She was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 1999-2000 and then a senior writer at the Industry Standard, covering banking and finance. In addition to serving as director of the IMAC specialization, Schiffrin directs the journalism training programs of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), a global economic think-tank based at Columbia University. The IPD journalism training program has received support from Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, and the Open Society Institute. She was the founder of the website www.journalismtraining.net which provides training materials for journalists. She currently serves on the Advisory Board of Revenue Watch, an international NGO which seeks to ensure that developing countries receive the full benefit of their natural resources, and that the revenues generated are used, in an open and transparent way, to promote development. Schiffrin is a member of the sub-board of the Open Society Foundation's Media Program.
Fumitsugu Tosu
Co-President, Table For Two USA
Fumi Tosu runs the U.S. office for Table For Two (TFT), a nonprofit organization that addresses the opposing issues of malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa and obesity/overconsumption in the developed world through a unique “calorie transfer” program. TFT partners with corporate cafeterias, university dining halls and restaurants, designating a healthy, slightly low calorie Table For Two-branded meal. The reduced calories are monetized, and 25 cents per meal is donated and used to provide school meals in Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, and South Africa. In his prior life, Fumi spent six years as an economic consultant. Fumi received his BA from Williams College and a Master's in Development Practice (MDP) degree from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.
Kentaro Toyama
Researcher, School of Information, University of California, Berkeley
Kentaro Toyama is a Visiting Researcher in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently working on a book arguing that increasing human and institutional wisdom should be the primary focus of international development activities. Until 2009, Kentaro was Assistant Managing Director of Microsoft Research India, which he co-founded in 2005. At MSR India, he started the Technology for Emerging Markets research group, which conducts interdisciplinary research to understand how the world's poorest communities interact with electronic technology and to invent new ways for technology to support their socio-economic development. Prior to his time in India, Kentaro conducted computer vision and multimedia research at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington in the US and Cambridge, UK, and taught mathematics at Ashesi University in Accra, Ghana. Kentaro graduated from Yale University with a PhD in Computer Science and from Harvard University with a Bachelor's degree in Physics.
Fabio Veras Soares
Researcher and Coordinator, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG), and Researcher, Institute for Applied Economic
Research (IPEA), Brazil
Fabio Veras Soares is the coordinator of the cash transfers and social protection research agenda at UNDP’s International Poverty Centre in Brasilia. Mr. Soares has worked extensively on issues related to cash transfers in Latin America and Africa, safety nets, social and labor market policies, and the informal sector. He has co-edited an issue of Poverty in Focus dealing with the lessons learned from cash transfer programs in Africa and Latin America.
Katrin Verclas
Co-founder, MobileActive.org
Katrin Verclas is Co-founder and Editor of MobileActive.org, a global network of practitioners using mobile phones for social impact. Ms. Verclas is currently working on mobile projects in good governance and accountability and political participation in emerging democracies. She is also leading a team focused on mobile security tools for human rights defenders in repressive regimes. A native of Germany, she has written widely on mobile phones for organizing, advocacy, and citizen participation for civil society organizations. She has previously led several nonprofit organizations, including as the Executive Director of NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network, the national association of IT professionals working in the more than one million nonprofit organizations in the United States. She is the editor of Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission, published by Wiley & Sons. She is a frequent speaker on information and communication technologies in civil society at national and international conferences and has published numerous articles and publications on technology for social change in leading popular and industry publications. She was a 2009 TED Fellow, a 2010 fellow at the MIT Media Lab and was named by Fast Company as one of the most "Influential Women in Tech" in 2011.
