The case com­pe­ti­tion is an inter­ac­tive event where par­tic­i­pants will be develop cre­ative solu­tions to one of two timely inter­na­tional devel­op­ment prob­lems. Through a sim­u­la­tion based case study, par­tic­i­pants will offer pol­icy solu­tions to gov­ern­ment agen­cies and explore inno­v­a­tive part­ner­ships between the pri­vate and pub­lic sector

Hosted by H John Heinz III Col­lege, Carnegie Mel­lon University

The case com­pe­ti­tion is orga­nized by the Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment Group – a grad­u­ate stu­dent orga­ni­za­tion at Carnegie Mel­lon University’s Heinz Col­lege devoted to pro­mot­ing aware­ness of social, polit­i­cal, eco­nomic, and cul­tural issues around the world from a pub­lic pol­icy and inter­na­tional devel­op­ment per­spec­tive. Each year, par­tic­i­pat­ing stu­dents form teams to tackle real world, urgent prob­lems and crises that require cre­ativ­ity, inno­va­tion, and com­pas­sion to solve. Judged by pro­fes­sion­als directly involved with or hav­ing expe­ri­ence with the issues pre­sented in the cases, this is an excel­lent oppor­tu­nity for par­tic­i­pants to get pro­fes­sional feed­back on the via­bil­ity of their case solu­tions and learn about chal­lenges in the devel­op­ment space. This year’s cases address a diverse range of devel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties and issues such as empow­er­ing women, child mor­tal­ity, entre­pre­neur­ship, and improv­ing governance.

Par­tic­i­pants will be con­fronted with com­plex and nuanced prob­lems in areas such as deliv­er­ing time-sensitive, crit­i­cal health­care to avoid an immi­nent health cri­sis. They will also be asked to think non-linearly about devel­op­ment, to develop cre­ative tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tions to a human­i­tar­ian cri­sis through tools and ideas that may not be appar­ent. The prob­lems are lay­ered, intri­cate, and involve myr­iad sub­tleties. These are real chal­lenges con­fronting gov­ern­ments, devel­op­ment prac­ti­tion­ers, and the world. Par­tic­i­pate to gain valu­able insight into what’s going on. We are proud to have with us a dis­tin­guished panel of judges for the com­pe­ti­tion. They bring with them a wealth of exper­tise work­ing in the space of inter­na­tional devel­op­ment. Here are the bios:

Judges

Rema Pad­man (Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­sity) is Pro­fes­sor of Man­age­ment Sci­ence and Health­care Infor­mat­ics in the H. John Heinz III Col­lege at Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­sity in Pitts­burgh. She is also a Thrust Leader of Health Infor­mat­ics Research at iLab at the Heinz Col­lege, Adjunct Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Bio­med­ical Infor­mat­ics at the Uni­ver­sity of Pitts­burgh School of Med­i­cine, and Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor in the School of Health Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­sity of Sal­ford in UK. Dr. Padman’s research exam­ines health­care oper­a­tions and deci­sion sup­port and process mod­el­ing and risk analy­sis in the con­text of infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy inter­ven­tions in health­care deliv­ery and man­age­ment. She has devel­oped and applied opti­miza­tion, machine learn­ing, sta­tis­ti­cal and behav­ioral sci­ence mod­els and meth­ods for inves­ti­gat­ing IT inter­ven­tions such as e-health, m-health and chronic dis­ease man­age­ment. Some new research direc­tions include devel­op­ing and eval­u­at­ing IT-enabled per­son­al­ized health­care solu­tions for under­served and dis­abled pop­u­la­tions and novel ana­lyt­ics to sup­port ‘con­sum­a­bil­ity’ of health­care data for bet­ter deci­sion mak­ing by clin­i­cians and consumers.

Joseph Mertz (Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­sity) is an Asso­ciate Teach­ing Pro­fes­sor in the H. John Heinz III Col­lege at Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­sity. His teach­ing focuses on two threads: devel­op­ing technical-professional lead­er­ship skills and using tech­nol­ogy for devel­op­ment. He is direc­tor of Tech­nol­ogy Con­sult­ing in the Global Com­mu­nity, which has sent 57 stu­dents to 11 devel­op­ing coun­tries to help gov­ern­ment min­istries and NGOs improve their strate­gic use of tech­nol­ogy. He holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Com­puter Sci­ence from Penn State and the Uni­ver­sity of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, and a Ph.D. in Engi­neer­ing and Pub­lic Pol­icy from Carnegie Mel­lon. Between degrees, he worked as a sys­tems soft­ware devel­oper for Bell Lab­o­ra­to­ries for 5 years.

Eileen de Ravin is Pro­gram Man­ager of the Equa­tor Ini­tia­tive, a UNDP part­ner­ship that brings together the United Nations, gov­ern­ments, civil soci­ety, busi­nesses and grass­roots orga­ni­za­tions to rec­og­nize and advance local sus­tain­able devel­op­ment solu­tions for peo­ple, nature and resilient com­mu­ni­ties. The bien­nial Equa­tor Prize shines a spot­light on out­stand­ing community-based ini­tia­tives across the world that improve local well­be­ing through sus­tain­able nat­ural resource man­age­ment and envi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion. The part­ner­ship spon­sors Com­mu­nity Dia­logues where community-based prac­ti­tion­ers share lessons learned and best prac­tices peer-to-peer, as well as with regional and national pol­i­cy­mak­ers. Ms. de Ravin brings expe­ri­ence with health care and envi­ron­men­tal issues, pro­gram man­age­ment, and part­ner­ship build­ing to the Equa­tor Ini­tia­tive. Eileen holds a Mas­ters in Pub­lic Health from Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity. Before com­ing to UNDP she spent eight years lead­ing a Com­mu­nity Based Devel­op­ment Pro­gramme in India with a strong focus on health care and envi­ron­ment. Ear­lier Eileen was a women’s health care prac­ti­tioner in inner city New York.

Maika Hemphill is Poten­tial Energy’s Direc­tor of Devel­op­ment and Strat­egy, Maika is help­ing to lead the orga­ni­za­tion through a period of impact-based growth — tak­ing suc­cesses in PE’s work in Dar­fur, Sudan, and trans­lat­ing them to oper­a­tions through­out sub Saha­ran Africa. For­merly tasked with devel­op­ing Kiva.org’s pres­ence in the US domes­tic micro­fi­nance mar­ket, Maika was respon­si­ble for wide­spread domes­tic growth and recog­ni­tion– both through Kiva’s portfolio-based invest­ments as well as strate­gic part­ner­ships. Prior to her time at Kiva, Maika worked as an invest­ment banker under Piper Jaffray’s Finan­cial Restruc­tur­ing Group as well as a Senior Loan Offi­cer under ACCION USA’s lend­ing team. Work­ing in-depth with US micro-entrepreneurs, and with cor­po­ra­tions in finan­cial dis­tress or bank­ruptcy, has allowed her a strong eye towards rec­og­niz­ing both strengths and hid­den weak­nesses in non-traditional orga­ni­za­tional set­tings. Maika holds a B.S. in both Finance and Inter­na­tional Busi­ness as well as a minor in Span­ish from New York University.

Selena Joe is a man­ager in the Life Sci­ence & Health­care prac­tice at Deloitte Con­sult­ing LLP. She works with large/academic health sys­tems to imple­ment CIS/EHR sys­tems to sup­port orga­ni­za­tion strategy/regulatory requirements/ per­for­mance improve­ment ini­tia­tives. She advises and coaches clients through full life cycle imple­men­ta­tions to design/build clin­i­cal sys­tems that sup­port clin­i­cians in their work­flow and facil­i­tate projects’ end-user adop­tion, train­ing, change man­age­ment and acti­va­tion. A Carnegie Mel­lon grad­u­ate, she has worked with clients like Kaiser Per­ma­nente, Univ. of Michi­gan Health, Univ. among others.