Panel 1: Small Busi­ness, Big Impact: Cre­at­ing an Enabling Envi­ron­ment for SME Growth

Small and Medium Enter­prises (SMEs) rep­re­sent that largest seg­ment of the for­mal pri­vate sec­tor in most devel­op­ing coun­tries. As such, they offer an impor­tant oppor­tu­nity for growth, but they also face sig­nif­i­cant bind­ing con­straints. This panel will bring researchers, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, and entre­pre­neurs together to explore inno­v­a­tive meth­ods of pro­mot­ing SME growth.

Mod­er­a­tor
Mar­tin Rotem­berg is a Vis­it­ing Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor at HKS. He pri­mar­ily stud­ies the sources of pro­duc­tiv­ity growth ‐ in par­tic­u­lar the role of real­lo­ca­tion, both across and within sec­tors. His dis­ser­ta­tion focused on mea­sur­ing the aggre­gate effects of gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies for small firms in India. He received his Ph.D. in Busi­ness Eco­nom­ics from Har­vard in 2015.

Speak­ers

Lucia Sanchez is the Direc­tor of the Small and Medium Enter­prise (SME) Pro­gram at Inno­va­tions for Poverty Action (IPA). Besides pro­vid­ing strate­gic lead­er­ship to the pro­gram, she coor­di­nates its research net­work and agenda, and leads the Program’s efforts on project devel­op­ment, fundrais­ing and pol­icy out­reach. Prior to join­ing IPA, she worked on the design and imple­men­ta­tion of SME devel­op­ment poli­cies, both at the United Nations Indus­trial Devel­op­ment Orga­ni­za­tion (UNIDO) in Viet­nam, and at the National Min­istry of Indus­try and the National Bank in Argentina. She holds a Mas­ters degree in Pub­lic Admin­is­tra­tion in Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment (MPA/ID) from Har­vard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment, a grad­u­ate degree in Devel­op­ment Eco­nom­ics from FLACSO, and an BA in Soci­ol­ogy (hon­ors) from Uni­ver­sity of Buenos Aires. Simon Win­ter is TechnoServe’s Senior Vice Pres­i­dent of Devel­op­ment. He is respon­si­ble for lead­ing strat­egy, thought lead­er­ship, and busi­ness and pro­gram devel­op­ment. He is also respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing and incu­bat­ing inno­v­a­tive pro­grams, includ­ing around cap­i­tal access for SMEs. Pre­vi­ously he was Regional Direc­tor for Africa. He joined Tech­noServe in 2003.

Simon Win­ter is TechnoServe’s Senior Vice Pres­i­dent of Devel­op­ment. He is respon­si­ble for lead­ing strat­egy, thought lead­er­ship, and busi­ness and pro­gram devel­op­ment. He is also respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing and incu­bat­ing inno­v­a­tive pro­grams, includ­ing around cap­i­tal access for SMEs. Pre­vi­ously he was Regional Direc­tor for Africa. He joined Tech­noServe in 2003. Simon was a man­age­ment con­sul­tant with McK­in­sey and Com­pany (1998–2003) dur­ing which he co-led the firm’s inter­na­tional devel­op­ment prac­tice. He worked as an eco­nomic plan­ner for the Botswana gov­ern­ment, and a devel­op­ment con­sul­tant in South­ern Africa. He started his career with Bar­clays Bank plc in the UK, Cote d’Ivoire and Aus­tralia. Simon is cur­rently a Senior Fel­low at the Mossavar-Rahmani Cen­ter for Busi­ness and Gov­ern­ment at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and tak­ing a six month sab­bat­i­cal from Tech­noServe. He is a found­ing Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee mem­ber of the Aspen Net­work for Devel­op­ment Entre­pre­neurs (ANDE), a Board Mem­ber of Root Cap­i­tal, a steer­ing com­mit­tee mem­ber of the Ini­tia­tive for Small­holder Finance, and a mem­ber of the Trans­for­ma­tion Lead­ers Net­work of the World Eco­nomic Forum’s New Vision for Agri­cul­ture. Simon orig­i­nates from the UK and holds a PhD in eco­nom­ics from the School of Ori­en­tal and African Stud­ies, Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don, 1998, which focused on the devel­op­ment of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor in Zimbabwe.

Alan Mar­tinez leads the account man­age­ment team of EFL. He has part­nered with chief exec­u­tives and other senior lead­ers of the top banks pro­vid­ing access to cap­i­tal for under­served entre­pre­neurs and con­sumers across North Amer­ica, Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin Amer­ica. After start­ing his lend­ing career at Shore­Bank in Chicago, he joined Shore­Bank Inter­na­tional where he founded the company’s credit scor­ing prac­tice and led micro and SME finance pro­grams across the globe.Alan earned a BA in Phi­los­o­phy from the Uni­ver­sity of Texas and a Master’s degree in Pub­lic Pol­icy from Har­vard University.

CJ Fonzi leads Dal­berg Group’s efforts to iden­tify, inno­vate, and sup­port new busi­ness lines that increase Dalberg’s over­all con­tri­bu­tion to inclu­sive and sus­tain­able growth. CJ’s man­date is to develop a range com­ple­men­tary busi­ness mod­els that thrive as com­mer­cial enter­prises while address­ing the chal­lenges fac­ing the world’s most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple. CJ stepped into this role after four years with Dal­berg Global Devel­op­ment Advi­sors ini­tially in South Africa and most recently as a Senior Project Man­ager in New York. As a con­sul­tant, CJ pri­mar­ily focused on Impact invest­ing, SME finance and sup­port, dig­i­tal finan­cial ser­vices, and impact mea­sure­ment. CJ joined Dal­berg from the Global Impact Invest­ing Net­work (GIIN) where he served as Man­ager of the Impact Report­ing and Invest­ment Stan­dards (IRIS). In this role CJ led the devel­op­ment of the IRIS 2.0 stan­dards, worked closely with 30 impact investors to col­lect their social per­for­mance data, and authored the first IRIS data report­ Data Dri­ven. CJ Served on the Obama Administration’s Coun­cil of Experts for the 2016 Global Entre­pre­neur­ship sum­mit, and was mem­ber of the steer­ing com­mit­tee for the Aspen Net­work for Devel­op­ment Entre­pre­neurs (ANDE) in South Africa. Last year, CJ co­authored the SSIR arti­cle “Met­rics 3.0: A New vision for Shared Met­rics”. He holds an MBA from Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity with a con­cen­tra­tion in Sus­tain­able Global Enter­prise and a BS with high hon­ors from Rens­se­laer Poly­tech­nic Insti­tute in Infor­ma­tion Technology.

Panel 2: Suc­cess­ful Cases in Know-how Acqui­si­tion and Indus­trial Transformation

The panel will dis­cuss suc­cess­ful cases of trans­for­ma­tion and indus­tri­al­iza­tion. How pub­lic insti­tu­tions can facil­i­tate the process and the impact of finan­cial insti­tu­tions on trans­for­ma­tion and indus­tri­al­iza­tion.

Mod­er­a­tor
Juan Pablo Chau­vin is a PhD can­di­date in Pub­lic Pol­icy asso­ci­ated with the Cen­ter for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment and the Taub­man Cen­ter for State and Local Gov­ern­ment at Har­vard. His research focuses on Devel­op­ment Eco­nom­ics and Urban Eco­nom­ics, with a focus on the role of pro­duc­tive struc­tures and human cap­i­tal in the devel­op­ment of cities, regions and coun­tries. In the past he was a Con­sul­tant with the Ger­man Tech­ni­cal Coop­er­a­tion Agency (GIZ) in Ecuador where he advised local and provin­cial gov­ern­ments on eco­nomic devel­op­ment poli­cies. He is also an Instruc­tor and Teach­ing Fel­low in Eco­nom­ics and Sta­tis­tics at the Har­vard Kennedy School, and has held teach­ing posi­tions at Ecuado­rian uni­ver­si­ties. He holds a BA in Eco­nom­ics and a BA in Soci­ol­ogy from Uni­ver­si­dad San Fran­cisco de Quito, a Mas­ter in Pub­lic Pol­icy (Local Devel­op­ment) from FLACSO-Ecuador and a Mas­ter in Pub­lic Admin­is­tra­tion in Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment from Harvard

Speak­ers

Mar­garet McMil­lan is a pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics at Tufts Uni­ver­sity and a Research Asso­ciate in the NBER’s pro­gram on Inter­na­tional Trade and Invest­ment. In 2009, she was appointed the Direc­tor of the Devel­op­ment Strate­gies and Gov­er­nance Divi­sion of the Inter­na­tional Food Pol­icy Research Insti­tute. McMil­lan holds a Ph.D. in eco­nom­ics (with dis­tinc­tion) from Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity an MPA from Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity and B.A. in math­e­mat­ics and eco­nom­ics (summa cum laude) from Boston Uni­ver­sity. Before com­ing to acad­e­mia, she taught math in the Repub­lic of Mali, man­aged a project for the World Bank in the United Repub­lic of Tan­za­nia and worked as a finan­cial ana­lyst at Lehman Broth­ers. McMillan’s research inter­ests lie in the areas of inter­na­tional trade, invest­ment and devel­op­ment. McMil­lan is the recip­i­ent of numer­ous awards for her research. In 2005, she was named the William and Flora Hewlett Foun­da­tion Fel­low at the Rad­cliffe Insti­tute for Advanced Study. She is also a recip­i­ent of research grants from the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion, the Cen­ter for Aids Research and the NBER Africa Project. She is cur­rently the prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor on a multi-million dol­lar project funded by the Eco­nomic and Social Research Coun­cil of the U.K. designed to enhance the under­stand­ing of eco­nomic growth and struc­tural change in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her work has been fea­tured in the New York Times and the NBER Digest and has been pub­lished in a wide range of lead­ing eco­nom­ics journals.

Helen Hai is the United Nations Indus­trial Devel­op­ment Orga­ni­za­tion (UNIDO) Good­will Ambas­sador for indus­tri­al­iza­tion in Africa. She is the CEO of the Made in Africa Ini­tia­tive which advises the gov­ern­ments of Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Sene­gal for indus­tri­al­iza­tion and invest­ment pro­mo­tion and. Ambas­sador Hai is Co-Founder of C&H Gar­ments, which is a pio­neer Pan-African export-oriented gar­ments man­u­fac­turer with pres­ence in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Sene­gal. Ambas­sador Hai was trained as an actu­ary in the United King­dom with 15 years of inter­na­tional expe­ri­ence in FTSE 100 com­pa­nies. She served pre­vi­ously as Vice Pres­i­dent and Chief Actu­ary for Zurich Finan­cial Ser­vices in China, and a Part­ner in Jar­dine Lloyd Thomp­son Group in Lon­don. She has BA in actu­ar­ial sci­ence and MSc in actu­ar­ial man­age­ment from CASS Busi­ness School in Lon­don and EMBA from INSEAD and Tsinghua Uni­ver­sity. Ambas­sador Hai was named a 2015 Global Young Leader by World Eco­nomic Forum and received the 2015 African Busi­ness Icon Award. She is on the com­mit­tee of Global Com­mis­sion on Busi­ness and Sus­tain­able Development.

Obi O. Emekek­wue joined Afrex­im­bank in Sep­tem­ber 2012 as head of the Exter­nal Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit with the title of Senior Man­ager. In that posi­tion, he has over­seen the estab­lish­ment of a sub­stan­tive Exter­nal Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit and has been respon­si­ble for design­ing, man­ag­ing and imple­ment­ing the Bank’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions and out­reach strate­gies. Prior to join­ing the Bank, he worked for 18 years at the United Nations, most recently serv­ing as a senior Press Offi­cer in the Depart­ment of Pub­lic Infor­ma­tion at the New York Head­quar­ters. His United Nations expe­ri­ence also included stints as Pub­lic Infor­ma­tion Offi­cer, Media Spe­cial­ist and Pro­gramme Spe­cial­ist in sev­eral agen­cies, includ­ing the United Nations Devel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) and the United Nations Pop­u­la­tion Fund (UNFPA), with tasks span­ning such areas as press cov­er­age of the United Nations Gen­eral Assem­bly and its Main Com­mit­tees; man­age­ment of Africa-focused com­mu­ni­ca­tions activ­i­ties at UNDP; over­see­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions activ­i­ties at the United Nations Coun­try Team in Papua New Guinea; and over­see­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of pop­u­la­tion devel­op­ment pro­grammes and activ­i­ties in 11 West African coun­tries at UNFPA. Before his United Nations career, Obi was United Nations and North Amer­ica Bureau Chief of the News Agency of Nige­ria (NAN), an orga­ni­za­tion he also served var­i­ously as Senior Polit­i­cal Cor­re­spon­dent, Busi­ness Cor­re­spon­dent, Edi­tor, Sub-Editor, and Sports Cor­re­spon­dent. Obi com­pleted his Mas­ter of Arts in inter­na­tional rela­tions at St. John’s Uni­ver­sity, New York, with a 4.0 GPA and received a post­grad­u­ate cer­tifi­cate in inter­na­tional law and diplo­macy from the same insti­tu­tion. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the Uni­ver­sity of Nige­ria, Nsukka.

Paula Byer is the Chief Research Offi­cer in the Office of the Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos and regional trade spe­cial­ist with respon­si­bil­ity for imple­men­ta­tion of the CARICOM Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­omy in Bar­ba­dos. Ms. Byer holds a Mas­ter of Sci­ence of degree in Eco­nomic Analy­sis and Pol­icy and has spent more than 16 years advanc­ing the inter­ests of the Gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos and the Caribbean Com­mu­nity in inter­na­tional trade mat­ters. Her work spanned Caribbean Com­mu­nity nego­ti­a­tions, ACP‐EU and WTO mat­ters and the now sus­pended CARICOM‐Canada and Free Trade Area of the Amer­i­cas (FTAA) nego­ti­a­tions. As a mem­ber of the Bar­ba­dos team of nego­tia­tors Ms. Byer pur­sued pro­vi­sions aimed at indus­trial advance­ment and increased invest­ment in the Caribbean. Her cur­rent respon­si­bil­i­ties include assess­ing the impact of the regional inte­gra­tion pro­gramme on the devel­op­ment prospects of the Caribbean economies. Ms. Byer is a Mason Fel­low and Raus­ing Fel­low at the Har­vard Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment pur­su­ing a Mas­ter in Pub­lic Administration.

Panel 3: Lever­ag­ing FDI for Sus­tained and Equi­table Growth

The panel will explore cases across the globe in which FDI suc­cess­fully fueled sus­tain­able and inclu­sive growth. Prac­ti­tion­ers, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, and aca­d­e­mic par­tic­i­pants will dis­cuss what made these cases dif­fer­ent and how to cre­ate an eco-system in which FDI can cat­alyze growth.

Mod­er­a­tor
Matte Har­tog is a Research Fel­low at the Cen­ter for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity. His research focuses on the role of knowl­edge dif­fu­sion through exter­nal sources in fos­ter­ing struc­tural change of economies. For new eco­nomic activ­i­ties to develop in coun­tries, cities and firms, an influx of new capa­bil­i­ties is often nec­es­sary, which can be obtained through the inflow of orga­ni­za­tions (for instance, multi­na­tional com­pa­nies) and peo­ple from else­where. Matte par­tic­u­larly focuses on eco­nomic devel­op­ment in Colom­bia and Mex­ico. He grad­u­ated from the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics with a Master’s degree in Local Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment and from Utrecht Uni­ver­sity with a Master’s degree in Human Geog­ra­phy and Plan­ning, and con­ducted PhD research on eco­nomic devel­op­ment in Colom­bia, Fin­land, The Nether­lands and Sweden.

Speak­ers

Brigit Helms is the Gen­eral Man­ager of the Mul­ti­lat­eral Invest­ment Fund (MIF).Prior to join­ing the MIF, she served as the Direc­tor of SPEED, a USAID-funded pro­gram in Mozam­bique seek­ing to improve the busi­ness envi­ron­ment in that coun­try. Before join­ing SPEED, Dr. Helms was senior expert for finan­cial inclu­sion at McK­in­sey and Com­pany, where she worked with banks and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies to build new busi­ness mod­els to reach low income clients and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of Uni­tus, Inc., a global non-profit ded­i­cated to finan­cial ser­vices in East Africa and India.Dr. Helms spent four years with the Inter­na­tional Finance Cor­po­ra­tion, where she led the organization’s Advi­sory Ser­vices work in Indone­sia. She was a found­ing mem­ber of the Con­sul­ta­tive Group to Assist the Poor­est (CGAP), a global cen­ter for finan­cial ser­vices. Early in her career, Dr. Helms held posi­tions in the Latin Amer­ica and Caribbean Divi­sion of the Inter­na­tional Fund for Agri­cul­ture Devel­op­ment and the Caribbean Basin Divi­sion of the U.S. Depart­ment of Com­merce. She holds a Ph.D. in Agri­cul­ture and Devel­op­ment Eco­nom­ics from Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity and a Mas­ters in Inter­na­tional Stud­ies from Johns Hop­kins University’s School of Advanced Inter­na­tional Studies.

Pro­fes­sor Mag­gie Kigozi is a fel­low of the Africa Lead­er­ship Ini­tia­tive of the Aspen Insti­tute, a trustee of the Shell Foun­da­tion and the chair­per­son of the Africa Scout Foun­da­tion. She is a Med­ical Doc­tor by train­ing who prac­ticed Med­i­cine in Uganda, Kenya and Zam­bia. She joined the cor­po­rate world in 1994 as Mar­ket­ing Direc­tor of Crown Bot­tlers (Pepsi) Ltd. In 2000, she was appointed as the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Uganda Invest­ment Author­ity. Dur­ing her tenure the UIA received 4 bil­lion $ for­eign invest­ment and licensed 10 bil­lion $ domes­tic invest­ment. Fol­low­ing her retire­ment in 2011, she con­sulted UNIDO and ITC. Mag­gie sits on the boards of the Pri­vate Sec­tor Foun­da­tion and Uganda Man­u­fac­tur­ers Asso­ci­a­tion where she chairs the Mar­ket­ing Com­mit­tee which hosts the Uganda Inter­na­tional Trade Fair. She is a board mem­ber of Ugan­dan National Forestry Author­ity, Mulago Hos­pi­tal and CBA Bank. As the pres­i­dent of the Busi­ness and Pro­fes­sional Women (BPW) and a mem­ber of The Elders forum of Uganda and The Women’s Sit­u­a­tion Room, she is engages activ­i­ties that pro­mote lead­er­ship and entre­pre­neur­ship for women and youth and ensure peace in the region. Mag­gie was an ardent sports­woman and rep­re­sented Uganda in Ten­nis, Table Ten­nis, Squash and Motor­cy­cle Racing.

Karl P. Sauvant, Ph.D.
is Res­i­dent Senior Fel­low at the Colum­bia Cen­ter on Sus­tain­able Invest­ment (CCSI), a joint cen­ter of Colum­bia Law School and the Earth Insti­tute at Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity; Adjunct Senior Research Scholar and Lecturer-in-Law at Colum­bia Law School; Fel­low, Acad­emy of Inter­na­tional Busi­ness; and Hon­orary Fel­low, Euro­pean Inter­na­tional Busi­ness Acad­emy. Until July 2005, Dr. Sauvant was Direc­tor of the United Nations Con­fer­ence on Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD’s) Invest­ment Divi­sion (DITE). His respon­si­bil­i­ties included man­ag­ing the Divi­sion; pro­mot­ing inter­na­tional consensus-building in the areas of FDI, tech­nol­ogy and enter­prise devel­op­ment; pro­vid­ing intel­lec­tual lead­er­ship for policy-oriented research; and con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing and super­vis­ing tech­ni­cal assis­tance activ­i­ties in this field. Dr. Sauvant had joined the United Nations in 1973 and, as of 1975, focused his work on mat­ters related to FDI. In 1988, he became respon­si­ble for the Organization’s pol­icy analy­sis work on FDI. In 2001, he became Direc­tor of DITE. While at the U.N., he cre­ated, in 1991, the pres­ti­gious annual World Invest­ment Report, of which he was the lead author until 2004. In 1992, Dr. Sauvant founded the jour­nal Transna­tional Cor­po­ra­tions, serv­ing as its edi­tor until 2005. He pro­vided intel­lec­tual lead­er­ship and guid­ance to a series of 25 mono­graphs on key issues related to inter­na­tional invest­ment agree­ments, which were pub­lished in 2004/05 in three vol­umes, and he edited, together with Dr. John H. Dun­ning, a 20-volume Library on Transna­tional Cor­po­ra­tions (pub­lished by Rout­ledge). His name is asso­ci­ated with a great num­ber of United Nations pub­li­ca­tions on FDI over his three decades of ser­vice in the U.N. Dr. Sauvant received a Ph.D. degree from the Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia, Philadel­phia. He is a national of Ger­many, mar­ried to Sil­vana F. da Silva, a national of Brazil.

Work­shop: BCG Work­shop on Pri­vate Sec­tor Growth