Panel 1: New role for aid

Extreme poverty has been halved in the past two decades. To what extent has aid con­tributed to this, and what should be the role of aid in the future? The growth in aid has led to a pro­lif­er­a­tion of new donors and devel­op­ment insti­tu­tions, both tra­di­tional and emerg­ing. While this pro­lif­er­a­tion had the poten­tial to cre­ate spe­cial­iza­tion and encour­age inno­va­tion and effi­cacy, it has arguably led to sig­nif­i­cant dupli­ca­tion of efforts and inef­fi­ciency. This panel will explore dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on what should be the new role of donors and devel­op­ment insti­tu­tions. It will also dis­cuss how to build a new aid archi­tec­ture that improves coor­di­na­tion between the increas­ing num­ber of donors and devel­op­ment insti­tu­tions and pushes them to be more open and accountable.

Direc­tors: Adri­enne Parish Fuentes and Igna­cio Alvaro Benito

Speak­ers:

MICHAEL WOOLCOCK (MODERATOR) is both a Lec­turer in Pub­lic Pol­icy and Lead Social Devel­op­ment Spe­cial­ist with the World Bank’s Devel­op­ment Research Group in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. His cur­rent work focuses on inter­ac­tions between cus­tom­ary and state legal sys­tems, con­ducted as part of the World Bank’s global ‘Jus­tice for the Poor’ pro­gram (which he co-founded), and strate­gies for assess­ing com­plex social inter­ven­tions. His most recent books are Con­test­ing Devel­op­ment: Par­tic­i­pa­tory Projects and Local Con­flict Dynam­ics in Indone­sia (with Patrick Bar­ron and Rachael Diprose; Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 2011), and His­tory, His­to­ri­ans and Devel­op­ment Pol­icy: A Nec­es­sary Dia­logue (edited with C.A. Bayly, Vijayen­dra Rao and Simon Szreter; Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­sity Press, 2011). An Aus­tralian national, he has an M.A. and Ph.D. in soci­ol­ogy from Brown Uni­ver­sity. He taught pre­vi­ously at Har­vard Kennedy School from 2000–2006, and from 2006–2009 was found­ing Research Direc­tor of the Brooks World Poverty Insti­tute at the Uni­ver­sity of Man­ches­ter, where he was Pro­fes­sor of Social Sci­ence and Devel­op­ment Policy.

LAURA LÓPEZ DE CERAIN SALSAMENDI is the Direc­tor of Mul­ti­lat­eral, Hor­i­zon­tal and Finan­cial Coop­er­a­tion of the Span­ish Agency for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion (AECID) under the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs and Coop­er­a­tion. She has been a Civil Ser­vant belong­ing to the State Senior Civil Admin­is­tra­tors Body since1993, when she joined the Min­istry of Social Affairs as Head Offi­cer for NGO and Grants. She has held var­i­ous posi­tions in the Span­ish Pub­lic Admin­is­tra­tion at the cen­tral, regional and local level in social, cul­tural, envi­ron­men­tal and inter­na­tional coop­er­a­tion mat­ters. At the Min­istry of Cul­ture she held var­i­ous posi­tions from 1995 to 2001 at the Direc­torate Gen­eral for Cul­tural Coop­er­a­tion and Fine Arts. She was Deputy Sec­re­tary Gen­eral of the Span­ish Agency for Inter­na­tional Coop­er­a­tion (AECI), Min­istry of For­eign Affairs, from 2001 until 2004. In 2005 she went to serve in the regional admin­is­tra­tion: she was Deputy Direc­tor Gen­eral of His­tor­i­cal Her­itage and Deputy Direc­tor Gen­eral for Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion of the Agency for Immi­gra­tion and Coop­er­a­tion of the Madrid Regional Gov­ern­ment. She has also served at the munic­i­pal level from the year 2007 to 2012 as Direc­tor Gen­eral of Immi­gra­tion and Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion and Direc­tor Gen­eral for the Elderly and Social Ser­vices of the City of Madrid.

JULIO RAUDALES has been the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and Exter­nal Coop­er­a­tion in Hon­duras from 2010– to 2014, Julio Rau­dales has exten­sive expe­ri­ence man­ag­ing global and sec­to­r­ial plan­ning, mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion of poli­cies pro­grams in pub­lic sec­tor and nego­ti­a­tion and partnership-building with Inter­na­tional Coop­er­a­tion Agen­cies. A trained econ­o­mist and soci­ol­o­gist, he holds a Mas­ter in Applied Macro­eco­nom­ics of Catholic Uni­ver­sity of Chile. He has worked in sev­eral capac­i­ties, includ­ing as an inter­na­tional con­sul­tant on Poverty Reduc­tion and Sus­tain­abil­ity Analy­sis of Exter­nal and Inter­nal Debt, a researcher and uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor, colum­nist for news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines. He is cur­rently the Deputy Rec­tor for Inter­na­tional Rela­tions in the National Uni­ver­sity of Hon­duras (UNAH).

BRUCE BOLNICK is a devel­op­ment econ­o­mist with more than 40 years of expe­ri­ence as a pro­fes­sor, pol­icy adviser, inter­na­tional con­sul­tant, and devel­op­ment project man­ager. From 2003–2013, he was Chief Econ­o­mist for the Inter­na­tional Group at Nathan Asso­ciates, an inter­na­tional eco­nom­ics con­sult­ing com­pany. He recently retired, fol­low­ing two years in Zim­babwe head­ing a USAID eco­nomic growth pro­gram. Before join­ing Nathan, Dr. Bol­nick was a Fel­low in Devel­op­ment and Lec­turer at the Kennedy School, and ear­lier, a Senior Asso­ciate at the Har­vard Insti­tute for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment (HIID). He also taught at Bran­deis, North­east­ern, Duke, and the Uni­ver­sity of Nairobi. In addi­tion to Zim­babwe, Dr. Bol­nick spent more than 10 years as an eco­nomic adviser to finance min­istries and cen­tral banks in Mozam­bique, Malawi, Zam­bia, and Indone­sia. He has writ­ten or co-authored numer­ous pro­fes­sional pub­li­ca­tions and pol­icy papers, includ­ing a recent OECD book on improv­ing aid modal­i­ties for strength­en­ing tax sys­tems. His areas of inter­est include macro­eco­nomic man­age­ment, tax pol­icy, finan­cial sec­tor devel­op­ment, and growth and poverty reduc­tion. Dr. Bol­nick holds a Ph.D. in Eco­nom­ics from Yale University.

Panel 2: Does democ­racy help or hin­der development?

With the rise of China, the “Bei­jing con­sen­sus” has become more plau­si­ble. Coun­tries have good rea­son to believe that an ini­tial period of non-democracy might be best for eco­nomic devel­op­ment. Hence, a demo­c­ra­tic tran­si­tion would be rec­om­mended much fur­ther along a country’s devel­op­ment tra­jec­tory, if at all. Is this con­sen­sus accu­rate? This panel will explore whether democ­racy helps or hin­ders devel­op­ment in the short and long run, what form of democ­racy is required, and what level of eco­nomic devel­op­ment a coun­try should achieve before tran­si­tion­ing to a democracy.

Direc­tor: Kevin Tan

Speak­ers:

KEVIN TAN (MODERATOR) has been exposed to the democ­racy or devel­op­ment debate since he was a child, hav­ing grown up in both Sin­ga­pore and Hong Kong. He spent two years in the Sin­ga­porean mil­i­tary and is a for­mer activist for migrant work­ers. A for­mer debater for the Oxford Union, he has mod­er­ated numer­ous high-profile debates, includ­ing the famous No Con­fi­dence debate fea­tur­ing eight Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, as well as the vis­its of sev­eral heads of state. He grad­u­ated with high­est hon­ors in Phi­los­o­phy, Pol­i­tics, and Eco­nom­ics from Oxford Uni­ver­sity and is cur­rently pur­su­ing a Mas­ter in Pub­lic Pol­icy at the Har­vard Kennedy School.

FRANK FEULNER is a Gov­er­nance Spe­cial­ist and Par­lia­men­tary Devel­op­ment Expert with 15 years of expe­ri­ence and cur­rently works as a con­sul­tant with UNDP Myan­mar. He held the posi­tions of res­i­dent Senior Tech­ni­cal Spe­cial­ist with the UN in Viet­nam (2011–2013), Research Fel­low at the Asian Law Cen­ter, Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton (2010–2011), and Senior Par­lia­men­tary Adviser with UNDP Indone­sia (2006–2010). He designed and imple­mented sup­port projects for the par­lia­ments of Indone­sia, Viet­nam, Laos and Fiji, and worked with var­i­ous gov­er­nance and decen­tral­i­sa­tion projects, includ­ing for UNDP, GIZ, NDI, USAID, AusAID, CIDA and the WB. Mr. Feul­ner holds a PhD in polit­i­cal sci­ence from the Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don, School of Ori­en­tal & African Studies.

GEORGE MUKUNDI WACHIRA is the coor­di­na­tor of the African Gov­er­nance Archi­tec­ture and Plat­form with the African Union Com­mis­sion in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He is also an advo­cate of the High Court of Kenya and Pan-African human rights lawyer. He grad­u­ated with a law degree from the Uni­ver­sity of Nairobi, Kenya, a mas­ter and doc­tor­ate in inter­na­tional human rights law from the Uni­ver­sity of Pre­to­ria, South Africa, and is cur­rently a MC/MPA Mason Fel­low at the Har­vard Kennedy School.

Panel 3: Do cash trans­fers deliver?

Despite ini­tial skep­ti­cism that giv­ing money to the poor would per­versely dis­cour­age them from work­ing and per­pet­u­ate bad habits, cash trans­fers have proven to be an effec­tive devel­op­ment solu­tion. Although cash trans­fers have received wide sup­port, there remain crit­i­cal issues sur­round­ing their design and imple­men­ta­tion. Should they be con­di­tional, soft-targeted, and com­bined with other ser­vices? Should they be based on proxy means test­ing, com­mu­nity based tar­get­ing or self-targeting? This panel will explore dif­fer­ent mod­els of cash trans­fers (includ­ing those used by Oppor­tu­nidades in Mex­ico and Give Directly in Kenya), the tech­nol­ogy to sup­port these trans­fers, and tar­get­ing meth­ods to ensure that cash trans­fers are both cost-efficient and effective.

Direc­tor: Rodrigo Quintana

Speak­ers:

JANINA MATUSZESKI (MODERATOR) is Lec­turer in Pub­lic Pol­icy. Her inter­ests include pro­gram eval­u­a­tion, devel­op­ment eco­nom­ics, polit­i­cal econ­omy and research involv­ing dig­i­tal map data (GIS). Most recently, she worked for Oxfam Amer­ica as Senior Research Coor­di­na­tor, Com­mu­nity Finance Depart­ment, over­see­ing the oper­a­tional and impact research for Oxfam America’s Sav­ing for Change microsav­ings pro­gram in Mali, Sene­gal, Cam­bo­dia, El Sal­vador and Guatemala. Prior to this she served as as a water and san­i­ta­tion Peace Corps Vol­un­teer in Mali. She also worked at ideas42, a micro­fi­nance research cen­ter at Har­vard, focus­ing on small busi­ness devel­op­ment projects in India. She received a PhD in eco­nom­ics from Har­vard Uni­ver­sity in 2007, with spe­cial­ties in devel­op­ment eco­nom­ics, polit­i­cal econ­omy and macro­eco­nom­ics, and a BA from Amherst Col­lege in 1997 in chem­istry and physics.

SANDIP SUKHTANKAR is an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Eco­nom­ics at Dart­mouth Col­lege, a Vis­it­ing Scholar at the Har­vard Kennedy School, and an affil­i­ate of the Bureau for Research and Eco­nomic Analy­sis of Devel­op­ment (BREAD) and the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). His research inter­ests are in devel­op­ment eco­nom­ics, polit­i­cal econ­omy, and pub­lic eco­nom­ics, with a par­tic­u­lar focus on cor­rup­tion, gov­er­nance, and the deliv­ery of pub­lic ben­e­fits and ser­vices. Past projects have exam­ined the polit­i­cal econ­omy of sug­ar­cane coop­er­a­tives and incen­tives for cor­rup­tion in India’s National Rural Employ­ment Guar­an­tee Schemes (NREGS). Cur­rent projects include a ran­dom­ized eval­u­a­tion of bio­met­ric ID cards in India, stud­ies exam­in­ing the effect of cor­rup­tion in the 2G spec­trum allo­ca­tion process in India on stock mar­kets and eco­nomic activ­ity, and a ran­dom­ized trial of cash ver­sus in-kind ben­e­fits in India’s main food secu­rity pro­gram (TPDS). Sukhtankar received his PhD from Har­vard Uni­ver­sity in 2009, and a BA from Swarth­more Col­lege in 2000. He pre­vi­ously worked at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion and the Cen­ter for Global Development.

EMANUELA GALASSO is an Econ­o­mist in the Poverty Group of the Devel­op­ment Research Group. Since join­ing the Bank as a Young Econ­o­mist in 2000, her research has cov­ered issues related to decen­tral­iza­tion and effec­tive­ness of social pro­tec­tion pro­grams and anti-poverty pro­grams. Her on-going work cur­rently focuses on the medium term and dynamic effects of anti-poverty pro­grams using multi-year lon­gi­tu­di­nal sur­veys in Mada­gas­car and Chile, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on their dis­tri­b­u­tional impacts. She com­pleted her MA and Ph.D. in Eco­nom­ics from Boston Col­lege in 2000.

NIALL KELEHER is the Direc­tor of Research Meth­ods and Train­ing at Inno­va­tions for Poverty Action.

Panel 4: The unmet demand for microsavings

Con­trary to the pop­u­lar view that the poor can­not save, the emerg­ing con­sen­sus is that the poor can and do actu­ally save, some­times sim­ply by putting money under a mat­tress. Expen­sive bor­row­ing options make sav­ing even more com­pelling for the poor. How­ever, finan­cial insti­tu­tions offer lim­ited sav­ing options and do not meet the demand for microsav­ing. This panel will explore the busi­ness case for microsav­ing, key design fea­tures of pro-poor sav­ing prod­ucts, and inno­va­tions to pro­mote sav­ing for the poor. It will also dis­cuss the alter­na­tive deliv­ery chan­nels that finan­cial insti­tu­tions can use to pro­vide small-balance deposits on a large scale and whether small-balance deposits have the poten­tial to cre­ate siz­able impact.

Direc­tor: Charles Data

Speak­ers:

MICHAEL CHU (MODERATOR) was appointed a Senior Lec­turer in the Ini­tia­tive on Social Enter­prise of the Gen­eral Man­age­ment Group of the Har­vard Busi­ness School in July 2003. He is also Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the IGNIA Fund, an invest­ment firm based in Mon­ter­rey, Mex­ico, ded­i­cated to invest­ing in com­mer­cial enter­prises serv­ing low-income pop­u­la­tions in Latin Amer­ica, which he co-founded in 2007. He con­tin­ues to serve as Senior Advi­sor and a found­ing part­ner of Pega­sus Cap­i­tal, a pri­vate equity firm in Buenos Aires, with a port­fo­lio which includes major com­pa­nies and real estate devel­op­ments in Argentina. Chu teaches the sec­ond year elec­tives Busi­ness and the Base of the Pyra­mid and Impact Invest­ing Field Course. In the past, he has taught the course Invest­ing and Man­ag­ing in Emerg­ing Mar­kets, and Effec­tive Lead­er­ship of Social Enterprises.

JULIUS ADRIAN R. ALIP works for CARD’s Leas­ing and Finance Cor­po­ra­tion (a sub­sidiary of CARD) and, as mem­ber of CARD’s man­age­ment com­mit­tee, he assists in mon­i­tor­ing seven hun­dred (700) unit/offices in the Philip­pines and he also rep­re­sents an equity invest­ment in SAMIC (a micro finance in Cam­bo­dia). Julius spe­cial­izes in Micro/Small and Medium Enter­prise Lend­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion of micro renew­able energy prod­ucts for off grid house­holds. He started his career in micro finance as a sav­ings offi­cer devel­op­ing and imple­ment­ing prod­ucts for micro entre­pre­neurs.. Out­side of his work as a micro finance prac­ti­tioner, he sits as a board trustee for an NGO in the Philip­pines that helps aging pro­fes­sional musi­cians in access­ing health care and ser­vices for entre­pre­neur­ship devel­op­ment. Julius is a recip­i­ent of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Pub­lic Ser­vice and cur­rently a Mason Mid Career Stu­dent at HKS.

MARK CIFUENTES is the Senior Vice Pres­i­dent of WOCCU Ser­vices Group for World Coun­cil of Credit Unions, and has 23 years of expe­ri­ence work­ing to advance the inter­na­tional credit unions move­ments. Cifuentes spe­cial­izes in finan­cial inclu­sion, pay­ment sys­tems, inter­na­tional pay­ment net­works, devel­op­ment field­work, project imple­men­ta­tion and eval­u­a­tion; he man­ages WSG inter­na­tional pay­ment sys­tems through inter­na­tional net­works in 6 coun­tries. He man­ages 2 for profit con­sul­tancy firms and WOCCU’s tech­ni­cal pro­grams and pro­vides tech­ni­cal sup­port to devel­op­ment pro­grams in the areas of train­ing, plan­ning, finan­cial stan­dards and mon­i­tor­ing, infor­ma­tion sys­tems, and reg­u­la­tion. Cifuentes has car­ried out field assign­ments in the areas of mar­ket­ing, busi­ness plan­ning, strate­gic plan­ning, credit union sta­bi­liza­tion, train­ing, finan­cial assess­ments, mem­ber ser­vices and impact sur­veys, and min­i­mum oper­at­ing stan­dards in over 25 coun­tries.. Mr. Cifuentes holds a BS in Inter­na­tional Rela­tions from the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin. He is flu­ent in Eng­lish and Span­ish and has a work­ing knowl­edge of French.

KIM WILSON is on the fac­ulty of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplo­macy. She teaches courses in Finan­cial Inclu­sion and Mar­ket Approaches to Human Devel­op­ment. Con­cur­rently with her teach­ing, she researches work on sav­ings and credit (as well as gam­bling) in the US and over­seas. Most recently, her work has cen­tered on sav­ings in groups and infor­mal sys­tems. She co-edited a book, Finan­cial Promise for the Poor, How Groups Build Microsav­ings, and reg­u­larly posts to Sav­ings Rev­o­lu­tion, a site which she co-founded. She has con­sulted to CGAP, Aga Khan Foun­da­tion, Catholic Relief Ser­vices, United Nations Devel­op­ment Pro­gram and many Inter­na­tional NGOs. She also works directly with finan­cial reg­u­la­tors through the Fletcher Lead­er­ship Pro­gram in Finan­cial Inclu­sion, a pro­gram funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foun­da­tion, which she co-directs.

Panel 5: Social entre­pre­neur­ship: Inno­v­a­tive solu­tions to intractable problems

Social entre­pre­neur­ship brings cre­ative, resource­ful, or inno­v­a­tive solu­tions to prob­lems not well tack­led by tra­di­tional approaches. Bridge Inter­na­tional Acad­e­mies pro­vide low cost but high qual­ity pri­mary edu­ca­tion in Kenya with bet­ter learn­ing out­comes than gov­ern­ment schools. Embrace pro­duces low cost baby incu­ba­tors pre­vent­ing neona­tal deaths in India. These are just a few exam­ples of how social entre­pre­neurs are chal­leng­ing the sta­tus quo to effect social change. As with tra­di­tional entre­pre­neur­ship, it often involves shift­ing resources from an area of lower to higher pro­duc­tiv­ity and greater yield. While social entre­pre­neur­ship often fuses the rigor of busi­ness with the pur­pose of social impact, orga­ni­za­tions can have non-profit, for-profit, or hybrid mod­els. The panel will explore whether social enter­prises can solve sys­temic prob­lems, how they achieve sus­tain­abil­ity and scale, and their role in the future of development.

Direc­tor: Rajan Patel

Speak­ers:

ALEX AMOUYEL (MODERATOR) is Direc­tor of Pro­gram for the Clin­ton Global Ini­tia­tive, where she curates the con­tent for the Annual Meet­ing and other meet­ings. Pre­vi­ously, she worked for Save the Chil­dren Inter­na­tional in Lon­don and across Asia, the Mid­dle East and Haiti, and at the Boston Con­sult­ing Group. Alex is also a mem­ber of Echo­ing Green’s Social Invest­ment Coun­cil and writes a blog col­umn on the IMPACT sec­tion of the Huff­in­g­ton Post. She has a Mas­ters from Sci­ences Po, Paris, and the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, and a BA from Trin­ity Col­lege, Cam­bridge, UK. Her pas­sions lie at the inter­sec­tion of the pri­vate and non-profit sec­tor, whether it relates to social entre­pre­neur­ship and pri­vate cap­i­tal solu­tions to devel­op­ment, or dri­ving effi­ciency and pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion in the non-profit sector.

DR. ASHER HASAN is the Founder and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Naya Jee­van (‘new life’ in Urdu/Hindi; http://www.njfk.org), a hybrid social enter­prise ded­i­cated to pro­vid­ing low-income fam­i­lies in the emerg­ing world with afford­able access to high qual­ity, health­care. Naya Jeevan’s oper­a­tions are cur­rently focused on Pak­istan with plans to repli­cate this model in India, Philip­pines, Mex­ico and other emerg­ing mar­kets. Asher was selected to join the World Eco­nomic Forum Global Agenda Coun­cil for Social Inno­va­tion for 2012–2014. He is a 2011 World Eco­nomic Forum/Schwab Foun­da­tion Asian Social Entre­pre­neur of the Year, a 2013 Syn­er­gos Senior Fel­low, a 2009 TED fel­low, a 2011 Ashoka US fel­low, a Draper Richards Social Entre­pre­neur Fel­low for 2009–2011, and an invited mem­ber of the Clin­ton Global Ini­tia­tive for 2009 and 2010.

KEVIN KUNG is a PhD stu­dent at MIT Bio­log­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Fel­low at the Waste Inno­va­tions Group at the MIT-Tata Cen­ter for Tech­nol­ogy and Design, where his work inter­sects with many social ven­tures in India. Kevin is the founder of the award-winning Takachar ini­tia­tive in Kenya, which turns unman­aged organic waste into char. Run­ning for three years now, this project has demon­strated pay­ing cus­tomers and oper­a­tional prof­itabil­ity, cre­at­ing more than 100 jobs, and sav­ing 70 tons of unman­aged waste. Kevin has had 7 years of expe­ri­ence engag­ing in var­i­ous low-cost engi­neer­ing design and con­sult­ing projects in Uganda, Ghana, India, Bangladesh, and Vietnam.

AUN RAHMAN was the found­ing Coun­try Direc­tor of Acu­men Fund Pak­istan from 2006–2012. Dur­ing this time, he directed the build-out of Pakistan’s first impact invest­ment port­fo­lio, invest­ing in pio­neer­ing enter­prises using mar­ket based mod­els to deliver basic goods/services in the poor in the coun­try — includ­ing invest­ments in agri­cul­ture, hous­ing, access to finance, and clean tech. He was also a mem­ber of Acumen’s global lead­er­ship team and led the Fund’s global hous­ing port­fo­lio. Prior to this, Aun was an Acu­men Fund Fel­low, work­ing with Saiban a non-profit low-cost hous­ing devel­oper in Pak­istan, help­ing them devel­op­ing busi­ness mod­els for deliv­er­ing afford­able hous­ing to the poor. Prior to join­ing Acu­men, Aun was an Asso­ciate in the Boston offices of Charles River Asso­ciates, an eco­nomic and strat­egy con­sult­ing firm. Aun holds an MPA from the Har­vard Kennedy School where he was a Mason Fel­low, and a BA in Eco­nom­ics from the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago. Aun’s pro­fes­sional pas­sion con­tin­ues to be explor­ing the extent to which mar­ket based mod­els and entre­pre­neur­ship can be used to tackle poverty chal­lenges in the devel­op­ing world. He has recently joined an inter­na­tional devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tion in Wash­ing­ton DC where he focuses on entre­pre­neur­ial finance and innovation.

ERIC REYNOLDS joined D-Lab in 2010 to coor­di­nate IDDS, help­ing lead it through sig­nif­i­cant tran­si­tion and growth into what is now IDIN. He man­ages the Scale-Ups phase II fel­low­ship pro­gram, devel­op­ing pro­to­types into manufacture-ready prod­ucts, and early ven­tures into orga­ni­za­tions with part­ner­ships nec­es­sary for scale. He co-instructs D-Lab: Design for Scale and D-Lab: Bio­di­ver­sity. Pre­vi­ously, Eric worked at the New Eng­land Com­plex Sys­tems Insti­tute and Bat­telle Memo­r­ial Insti­tute. He has field expe­ri­ence in Zam­bia, Ghana, Brazil, Hon­duras, Guatemala and India, where he’s build­ing a clean water prod­uct and ven­ture. Eric is also a proud Buck­eye and aspir­ing randonneur.

Panel 6: Impact invest­ing: Momen­tum and inno­va­tion of a young industry

Social impact invest­ing has the poten­tial to bring vast resources to devel­op­ment, par­tic­u­larly to fund social entre­pre­neurs. Although many prac­tices of impact invest­ing have existed for years, the com­plete eco-system for impact invest­ing has only been cre­ated recently and con­tin­ues to gain trac­tion. This panel will explore best prac­tices in this nascent indus­try and the role impact invest­ing can play in development.

Direc­tor: Lily Shen

Speak­ers:

DAVID WOOD (MODERATOR) is an Adjunct Lec­turer in Pub­lic Pol­icy and the Direc­tor of the Ini­tia­tive for Respon­si­ble Invest­ment (IRI) at the Hauser Cen­ter for Non­profit Orga­ni­za­tions. Cur­rent projects range from work with pen­sion fund trustees on respon­si­ble invest­ment poli­cies, mis­sion invest­ment by foun­da­tion endow­ments, research on the chang­ing nature of the sup­ply for and capac­ity to receive cap­i­tal for com­mu­nity invest­ment in the US, and a global sur­vey of the rela­tion­ship between pub­lic pol­icy and impact invest­ment. He was elected in 2008 to the Board of the Social Invest­ment Forum. Before he came to the IRI, he taught the his­tory of ethics, includ­ing the his­tory of eco­nomic thought at Boston Uni­ver­sity. He received his Ph.D. in His­tory from the Johns Hop­kins University.

AUN RAHMAN was the found­ing Coun­try Direc­tor of Acu­men Fund Pak­istan from 2006–2012. Dur­ing this time, he directed the build-out of Pakistan’s first impact invest­ment port­fo­lio, invest­ing in pio­neer­ing enter­prises using mar­ket based mod­els to deliver basic goods/services in the poor in the coun­try — includ­ing invest­ments in agri­cul­ture, hous­ing, access to finance, and clean tech. He was also a mem­ber of Acumen’s global lead­er­ship team and led the Fund’s global hous­ing port­fo­lio. Prior to this, Aun was an Acu­men Fund Fel­low, work­ing with Saiban a non-profit low-cost hous­ing devel­oper in Pak­istan, help­ing them devel­op­ing busi­ness mod­els for deliv­er­ing afford­able hous­ing to the poor. Prior to join­ing Acu­men, Aun was an Asso­ciate in the Boston offices of Charles River Asso­ciates, an eco­nomic and strat­egy con­sult­ing firm. Aun holds an MPA from the Har­vard Kennedy School where he was a Mason Fel­low, and a BA in Eco­nom­ics from the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago. Aun’s pro­fes­sional pas­sion con­tin­ues to be explor­ing the extent to which mar­ket based mod­els and entre­pre­neur­ship can be used to tackle poverty chal­lenges in the devel­op­ing world. He has recently joined an inter­na­tional devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tion in Wash­ing­ton DC where he focuses on entre­pre­neur­ial finance and innovation.

JANE HUGHES is the Direc­tor of Knowl­edge Man­age­ment at Social Finance, a non­profit orga­ni­za­tion that is ded­i­cated to mobi­liz­ing invest­ment cap­i­tal to drive social progress. She is also an adjunct pro­fes­sor of inter­na­tional finance at Boston College’s Car­roll School of Man­age­ment and Sim­mons Col­lege School of Man­age­ment. Prior to join­ing Social Finance, Jane was exec­u­tive direc­tor of World Learning’s master’s degree pro­gram in sus­tain­able devel­op­ment in Wash­ing­ton, D.C, and she spent 17 years as an inter­na­tional finance pro­fes­sor at Bran­deis University’s Inter­na­tional Busi­ness School. Prior to her aca­d­e­mic career, Jane was a vice pres­i­dent at Man­u­fac­tur­ers Hanover Trust Com­pany in New York. Jane has con­sulted, lec­tured, and pub­lished widely in the fields of inter­na­tional bank­ing and finance; busi­ness, gov­ern­ment, and the global econ­omy; and inter­na­tional devel­op­ment. She co-wrote a lead­ing text­book on inter­na­tional bank­ing, and will pub­lish the sec­ond edi­tion of Sep­a­rat­ing Fools From Their Money: A His­tory of Amer­i­can Finan­cial Scan­dals in fall 2014. Jane grad­u­ated magna cum laude from Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity with a degree in French lit­er­a­ture; she also has a master’s degree from Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity School of Advanced Inter­na­tional Stud­ies, and an MBA from New York University.

JOHANNES LOHMANN is the Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer of Instiglio, a social enter­prise focused on tying fund­ing for social projects to results. Instiglio emerged from the Har­vard Inno­va­tion Lab in 2012 and is build­ing a mar­ket for invest­ments in social pro­grams in emerg­ing mar­kets. Johannes has expe­ri­ence in cor­po­rate and project finance and in apply­ing finance to devel­op­ment. Before join­ing Instiglio he worked on emerg­ing mar­ket invest­ments in the pri­vate sec­tor at IFC, the World Bank’s invest­ment arm. As such, Johannes was involved in major equity and debt invest­ments in com­pa­nies in devel­op­ing coun­tries with the dual aims of gen­er­at­ing a sus­tain­able devel­op­ment impact and guar­an­tee­ing finan­cial returns for IFC and its co-investors. Before join­ing the IFC, Johannes worked in the invest­ment bank­ing divi­sion of Deutsche Bank in New York, help­ing global cor­po­rate clients raise financ­ing and arrange large merg­ers and acquisitions.

Panel 7: Busi­ness ecosys­tems: The pri­vate sector’s role in development

A healthy pri­vate sec­tor cre­ates jobs, encour­ages inno­va­tion, and raises income lev­els, which cat­alyze the tran­si­tion out of poverty in low income coun­tries. While grow­ing mar­kets in Asia, Africa and Latin Amer­ica con­tinue to attract invest­ment from multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions, these regions have had vary­ing lev­els of suc­cess in cre­at­ing a dynamic busi­ness ecosys­tem. Not only do busi­ness ecosys­tems cre­ate an encour­ag­ing envi­ron­ment for multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions to oper­ate at scale, but they also fos­ter broad-based eco­nomic devel­op­ment by enhanc­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for growth in local micro, small, and medium enter­prises. This panel will explore ques­tions such as: What respon­si­bil­ity do multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions in devel­op­ing coun­tries have in the cre­ation of vibrant busi­ness ecosys­tems? What strate­gies have suc­cess­ful cor­po­ra­tions adopted in devel­op­ing busi­ness ecosys­tems that respond to their oper­a­tional chal­lenges? Why have oth­ers failed? What kinds of part­ner­ships with the pub­lic and non-profit sec­tors are nec­es­sary to achieve healthy busi­ness ecosystems?

Direc­tor: Ngozika Amalu

Speak­ers:

SANGU DELLE (MODERATOR) is the co-founded of cleanacwa (for­merly the African Devel­op­ment Ini­tia­tive), an ini­tia­tive to ensure the pro­vi­sion of water and san­i­ta­tion in under­de­vel­oped regions. He is also the Chair­man and CEO of Golden Palm Invest­ments (GPI) which funds promis­ing start-ups for social impact in Nige­ria, Ghana and Zam­bia. He pre­vi­ously worked at Gold­man Sachs, Mor­gan Stan­ley and Valiant Cap­i­tal Part­ners. In 2012 he co-authored and pub­lished Con­tem­po­rary Africa through Poetry, and is cur­rently work­ing on his forth­com­ing book Seed­ing Growth: Africa’s Youngest Entre­pre­neurs. In 2014, Forbes named Sangu as one of Africa’s top 30 under 30 entre­pre­neurs and Euromoney selected Sangu as one of Africa’s Ris­ing Stars. He has also been rec­og­nized as a young global leader by the Huff­in­g­ton Post and TIME mag­a­zine, among sev­eral oth­ers. A Soros Fel­low, Sangu is pur­su­ing a Juris Doc­tor of Law and MBA at Har­vard Law School and Har­vard Busi­ness School.

WALT MAYO leads Endeavor’s mis­sion to achieve global scale. He has held inter­na­tional posi­tions in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors. For 12 years he man­aged Dell’s busi­ness units in South­ern Europe, Australia/New Zealand, Japan and Sin­ga­pore. He led Dell’s con­sumer busi­ness in Asia and expanded its pres­ence across China, India, and South East Asia. Walt served as a For­eign Ser­vice Offi­cer for the U.S. Depart­ment of State, with over­seas assign­ments in Bolivia, Pak­istan, and Cuba, and domes­tic assign­ments to the National Secu­rity Coun­cil Staff, U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and Depart­ment of State. Walt received a B.A. from Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, and an M.B.A. from the Uni­ver­sity of Virginia’s Dar­den Grad­u­ate School of Business.

TEODORA BERKOVA dri­ves for­ward strate­gies to engage with gov­ern­ments, mul­ti­lat­eral orga­ni­za­tions, and other stake­hold­ers of strate­gic impor­tance, with a focus on max­i­miz­ing Pearson’s social impact and inno­va­tion for under­served mar­kets. Teodora joined Pear­son from the United Nations Devel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP), where she led com­mu­ni­ca­tions and knowl­edge man­age­ment work on busi­ness mod­els that deliver social and com­mer­cial returns. Prior to that she worked as a cor­po­rate sus­tain­abil­ity con­sul­tant in Lebanon, and in New York City with the East Harlem Tuto­r­ial Pro­gram, a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion that runs K-12 after-school pro­grams and char­ter schools.

KARIN IRETON is the Exec­u­tive in charge of sus­tain­abil­ity for the Stan­dard Bank, Africa’s largest finan­cial ser­vices group. Focus areas include respon­si­ble financ­ing, cli­mate change and energy, envi­ron­men­tal and social risk and the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of sus­tain­abil­ity per­for­mance and issues to key stake­hold­ers. She has held sim­i­lar roles at min­ing giant Anglo Amer­i­can and pre­vi­ously served as a sus­tain­able energy adviser at Eskom. Her early career was in news and busi­ness jour­nal­ism. She holds an MA in Inter­na­tional Polit­i­cal Econ­omy (Leeds). She serves on the board of the National Busi­ness Ini­tia­tive and the Endan­gered Wildlife Trust and chairs the Insti­tute of Direc­tors sus­tain­abil­ity forum. She chaired the stake­holder Coun­cil for the Global Report­ing Ini­tia­tive from 2009 –2013.

PRINCE KOFI KLUDJESON is an astute busi­ness­man and the founder and exec­u­tive chair­man of Akosonoma Indus­tries Ltd, Klud­je­son Inter­na­tional Ltd, and All­tel Group of Com­pa­nies. In Decem­ber 2011, Kludjeson’s All­tel unveiled the KPad, an Android-based tablet device, rec­og­nized as an African ini­tia­tive com­pa­ra­ble with Apple’s iPad. The device is mar­keted in Ghana, Nige­ria, Liberia, and Mozam­bique, with mar­ket­ing plans for South Africa, Zim­babwe, and Kenya. Mr. Kludjeson’s newest entre­pre­neur­ial ven­ture, the KPhone, is an Android-based dual-SIM phone designed to give users 24/7 inter­net con­nec­tiv­ity on an All­tel SIM card. The main focus of the KPad and KPhone is to pro­vide e-learning and e-health solu­tions among other data com­mu­ni­ca­tion for Ghana­ian, African, and even­tu­ally world markets.