Harvard Center for International Development

This is the full audio from our second Security and Development Seminar Series. This session explores how trafficking in illicit drugs, weapons, and persons by transnational criminal organizations impedes development in many Latin American countries.

Audio recorded on December 1st, 2016.

For more information go to: bit.ly/2eyCcQU

Speakers:

1. Thomas Abt - Senior Research Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, Center for International Development

2. Daniel Mejia - Secretary of Security of Bogota, Colombia

3. Steven Dudley - Co-director, InSight Crime, Wilson Center

4. João M P De Mello - Lemann Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies

This is the full audio from our first Security and Development Seminar Series. This session explores how corruption and impunity obstruct development in Latin America, with a focus on Mexico.

Audio recorded on October 27th, 2016.

For more information go to: http://bit.ly/2eyCcQU

Speakers:

1. Ricardo Hausmann - Director, Center for International Development and Professor of the Practice of Economic Development, Harvard University.

2. Thomas Abt - Senior Research Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, Center for International Development

3. Lourdes Morales - Associate Professor, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica (CIDE)

4. Marco Fernandez - Research Professor, School of Government, Tec de Monterrey; Research Associate, México Evalúa

CID Student Ambassador Hubert Wu interviews Steven Koltai, Managing Director of Koltai & Company, and Brookings Guest Scholar on Governance Studies. In his recently launched book "Peace through Entrepreneurship: Investing in a Start-up Culture for Security and Development" Steven makes the case for government investment in entrepreneurship as a way to foster job creation and tackle security and development issues.

Interview recorded on March 3rd, 2017.

About the speaker: Steven Koltai is an expert on international entrepreneurship ecosystem development. He is currently Managing Director of Koltai & Company, an entrepreneurship program development consultancy. Most recently, he was Senior Advisor for Entrepreneurship at the US Department of State where he created and managed the Global Entrepreneurship Program (GEP), focused primarily in job creation via entrepreneurship in Muslim majority countries. Previously, Steven has 30 years of business experience as an investment banker (Salomon Brothers), management consultant (McKinsey & Company), media industry (Warner Bros and Lifetime Television), and as a multiple company successful entrepreneur and angel investor. He is a long time member of the Council on Foreign Relations where he was an International Affairs Fellow. Koltai serves on numerous for profit and not-for-profit Boards, including the Tisch College of Active Citizenship at Tufts University (his alma mater), Babson Global at Babson College, the Library of Congress’ David Rubenstein Literacy Awards Committee, the Museum of Hungarian-speaking Jewry in Safed, Israel, and Advancing Girls Education (AGE) Africa in Malawi.

CID Research Assistant Sehar Noor interviews Ljubica Nedelkoska, Growth Lab research fellow at the Center for International Development at Harvard University. Ljubica presented her recently published a paper on the impact of return migration on wages and employment on Albania: http://growthlab.cid.harvard.edu/publications/welcome-home-crisis-effects-return-migration-non-migrants-wages-and

Interview recorded on February 24th, 2017.

About the speaker: Ljubica's research focuses on human capital, migration, lifelong learning, capital-labor relations and structural transformation. She works at the intersection of research and policy, and has contributed to several such projects in Albania, Sri Lanka, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Germany. She holds a PhD in Economics of Innovation from the Friedrich Schiller University, Germany and a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the Appalachian State University, North Carolina. Before joining CID, Ljubica worked as a post-doctoral researcher and a coordinator of the Research Group “Economics of Innovation” at the Friedrich Schiller University and as a research fellow at the Zeppelin University in Germany.

CID Research Fellow Tim McNaught interviews Filipe Alfaiate and Ariana Almeida, Co-Founders of the Timor-Leste based NGO, Empreza Diak. Filipe and Ariana talk about how their dream to make a difference became an award winning NGO empowering poor women and their families in Timor-Leste, the newest and most impoverished country in Asia.

Interview recorded on February 10th, 2017.

They focus on what can be learned from the challenges, mistakes and successes they faced in the past six years while launching the timorese NGO Empreza Diak (which means Good Business) and developing a sustainable team of staff, volunteers and donors. All passionate about changing lives by creating opportunities that build better lives, not charity.

CID Student Ambassador Mohamed Quamar interviews Nika Gilauri, former Prime Minister of Georgia. Nika talks about his book, Practical Economics, in which he provides a detailed analysis of the reforms made in Georgia from 2004-2012.

Interview recorded on February 17, 2017.

About "Practical Economics": The book starts by discussing why the Georgian case is exemplary for other countries and proceeds to describe the fight against corruption, the rightsizing of government, the creation of a business-friendly environment, tax and customs reform, the privatization of state-owned enterprises, energy sector reforms, and smart spending approaches applied to welfare, healthcare, education, and procurement. In some cases, the description draws on the experiences of other countries, either because they served as an inspiration for Georgia’s reforms or because approaches pioneered in Georgia were successfully applied there.

In a nutshell, this book is an attempt to answer one question: how do you manage a transformation to bring about fast and sustainable growth?

CID Student Ambassador David Pareja interviews Antoine Van Agtmael, Senior Adviser at Foreign Policy Analytics and principal founder, CEO and CIO of Emerging Markets Management LLC.

Interview recorded on February 3rd, 2017.

About Antoine:

Mr. Van Agtmael is a senior adviser at Foreign Policy Analytics, a public policy advisory firm in Washington DC and was the principal Antoine Van Agtmaelfounder, CEO and CIO of Emerging Markets Management LLC (and later chairman of AshmoreEMM), a leading investment management firm for emerging market equities. He was also a founding director of the Strategic Investment GroupSM. Before founding EMM in 1987, Mr. van Agtmael was Deputy Director of the Capital Markets department of the International Finance Corporation ("IFC"), the private sector-oriented affiliate of the World Bank. While at IFC, he coined the term “emerging markets” and founded the IFC Emerging Markets Database. He was also a Division Chief in the World Bank's borrowing operations, Managing Director of Thailand's leading merchant bank TISCO and Vice President at Bankers Trust Company.

Mr. van Agtmael is co-author of The Smartest Places on Earth (Public Affairs, March 2016), author of The Emerging Markets Century (Free Press, 2007), Emerging Securities Markets (Euromoney, 1984), and co-editor of The World's Emerging Stock Markets (Probus Publishing, 1992). He was an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law Center and taught at the Harvard Institute of Politics and Thammasat University, Bangkok. He has lectured widely at universities and other professional audiences around the world. He holds an M.B.A. from New York University’s Stern School, an M.A. in Russian and Eastern European Studies from Yale University and an undergraduate degree in Economics from Erasmus University in the Netherlands.

He is a Board member of The Brookings Institution (and Co-Chair of its International Advisory Council), the NPR Foundation (and until 2013 its Chair and NPR board member), the Smithsonian’s Freer Sackler Gallery, and Magnum Photos. He is also a member of the Yale President’s Council on International Activities and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married and has two children and a grandchild.

Salimah Samji, CID's Building State Capability Program Director, interviews Matt Andrews, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and Lant Pritchett, Professor of the Practice of International Development at Harvard Kennedy School on their recently launched book "Building State Capability - Evidence, Analysis, Action". Michael Woolcock, Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School is also a co-author.

Recorded on the book launch event on February 13th, 2017.

The book uses data to identify failures in efforts to build state capability in development, employs theory to explain why these failures are common and likely to persist-keeping countries in capability traps--and builds on applied experience to offer a new approach to build state capability more effectively.

‘Building State Capability provides anyone interested in promoting development with practical advice on how to proceed—not by copying imported theoretical models, but through an iterative learning process that takes into account the messy reality of the society in question. The authors draw on their collective years of realworld experience as well as abundant data and get to what is truly the essence of the development problem.’ Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University;

CID Research Francisco Muci, Program Assistant at CID, interviews Francisco Marquez Lara, a Harvard Kennedy School MPP’12 alumnus who was held as a political prisoner in Venezuela. Francisco describes his experience and the context that led to his imprisonment.

Recorded on November 28, 2016

About the Speaker: Francisco Marquez Lara is a Venezuelan lawyer and polítical activist with the Voluntad Popular party. He was held as a political prisoner in Venezuela for four months. Throughout this time he was detained in four facilities under three organizations. This is the story of what he lived through and witnessed.

Before his imprisonment, Marquez was Chief of Staff for the Mayor of El Hatillo in Caracas. He obtained his law degree at Catholic University Andres Bello and his Master in Public Policy degree at Harvard Kennedy School.

CID Student Ambassador Mayra Salazar-Rivera interviews Roberto Martinez Yllescas, Head of OECD Mexico Centre. Roberto discusses Latin America's participation in global value chains and his views on how change in the NAFTA agreement could impact Mexico and the U.S.

Recorded on December 2nd, 2016.

About the Roberto Martinez: As head of the OECD Mexico Centre, Roberto Martínez Yllescas (MPP '95) works to increase the OECD's relevance and impact in Mexico and Latin America. Roberto was previously Chief of Staff to Commissioner Labardini as one of the founders of Mexico's Federal Telecommunications Institute. Previously, he was a Senior Advisor in the Secretariat of Communications and Transport in Mexico. He has over fifteen years of experience working in governmental, multilateral organizations and private sector companies as Government Affairs manager in Mexico at Intel Corp, as well as Central-Southern Regional Chief for the National Telecommunications, Electronics and IT Industry Association of Mexico. He has also been a senior consultant to the United Nations Development Programme, USAID and Mexico's Centre for Intellectual Capital and Competitiveness. Mr. Martínez Yllescas, a Mexican national, holds a BA in International Relations from El Colegio de México, a Master of Science degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government