The Privatization of Development Assistance Symposium
December 4-5, 2009
Participants:
Christian Barry 
Australian National University
Christian Barry is a Senior Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the Australian National University. Christian has served as a consultant and contributing author to three of the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Reports, was editor of Ethics & International Affairs, and directed the Carnegie Council's program Justice and the World Economy. He is author (with Sanjay Reddy) of International Trade and Labor Standards: A Proposal for Linkage (Columbia University Press, 2008). He is co-editor (with Thomas Pogge) of Global Institutions and Responsibilities: Achieving Global Justice (Blackwell, 2005), and (with Barry Herman and Lydia Tomitova) of Dealing Fairly with Developing Country Debt (Blackwell, 2007). He also hosts Public Ethics Radio, an online audio broadcast with ethicists discussing timely and important practical dilemmas, and writes a regular column for Policy Innovations magazine.
Lily Batchelder
NYU School of Law
Lily Bachelder is a Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. Her research involves the efficient design of tax incentives, distributional effects of wealth transfer taxes, and intersections between tax and social policy in addressing income disparities, economic insecurity, and barriers to intergenerational mobility. Professor Bachelder is the Co-Director of the Furman Academic Program and Director of the Leadership Program in Tax Law and Fiscal Policy. She also acts as a policy adviser to policymakers, public agencies, and nonprofits. Professor Batchelder received an A.B. from Stanford University, a M.P.P. from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Deborah Burand 
University of Michigan Law School
Deborah Burand joined the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School in 2008, as a Clinical Assistant Professor, to direct the launch of the Law School’s International Transactions Clinic (ITC). The ITC the first clinic of its kind in the United States, provides pro bono legal support to the cross-border transactions of organizations working at the base of the economic pyramid.
During her seven years in the microfinance sector, Burand first served as the Director of Capital Markets for FINCA International, and then as the Executive Vice President, Strategic Services, of the Grameen Foundation. She also is a co-founder and former President of Women Advancing Microfinance (WAM) International, and, former Chairman of the Board of Directors of Microfinance Opportunities. She sits on the investment committee of a microfinance investment fund managed by Deutsche Bank, and on the Advisory Council of MicroVest, a specialized fund investing in microfinance.
In the public sector she worked for the US Federal Reserve Board as a senior international banking attorney. She subsequently worked on international financial architecture issues at the US Treasury Department. In the private sector she worked in the New York office of the global law firm of Shearman & Sterling.
Tim Büthe
Duke University
Tim Büthe is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duke University, where his research and teaching spans international and comparative political economy. His overarching research interest concerns the evolution and persistence of institutions, the interaction between domestic and international institutions, and the ways in which institutions enable and constrain actors. His work on global private politics has focused primarily on the causes and consequences of delegating governance to non-state and increasingly also to non-governmental actors. He has directed multi-country, multi-industry business surveys to examine the delegation of regulatory authority (specifically standard-setting) for international product and financial markets.
For his work on the allocation of private aid by humanitarian and development NGOs, he is compiling the first comprehensive dataset of fund collected by major U.S.-based development NGOs from non-governmental sources and the allocation of this private aid across countries and projects. He has also worked on the politics of foreign direct investment into developing countries. His work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, World Politics, Governance, Law and Contemporary Problems, and other journals, as well as several edited volumes.
Jonathan Conning
Hunter College and NYU Wagner
Jonathan Conning is an Associate Professor of Economics at Hunter College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York working in the fields of development, political economy, and the study of property rights and contracts. His research explores the ways that asymmetric information, asset inequality and costly contract enforcement together shape how markets and resource allocation in developing countries. His published work includes articles on rural finance and financial intermediaries in developing countries, microfinance and group loans, the imperfect operation of land markets and the political economy of property rights reforms, equilibrium agrarian structures, as well as issues involved in the design and evaluation of targeted poverty alleviation programs. He is presently working on sabbatical at NYU Wagner working on a project on "Social Finance", which applies insights from the modern theory of corporate finance to develop new understandings of the ways that philanthropic funding, social entrepreneurship and policy might expand markets and services to the poor.
Sarah Dadush
IILJ, NYU School of Law
Sarah Dadush is an IILJ Fellow working primarily on administering the Institute's Financing Development program led by Professor Kevin Davis. Her research focuses on the regulation of immigrant remittances and innovations for development financing.
Prior to joining the IILJ, she worked at the law firm Allen & Overy for three and a half years, in the banking and litigation groups, where she had the opportunity to work on project financings and investor-state arbitration. She obtained her JD and LLM degrees in 2004 from Duke Law School. While at Duke, she led the International Law Society and founded the Law School's first International Development Fellowship, which has helped fund student internships and research projects in developing countries.
Prior to law school, Sarah worked at the Vera Institute of Justice in New York on international criminal justice reform issues, including police, prison and court reform. She also worked at an NGO in Brazil, Viva Rio, helping to organize a campaign against the sale and use of small weapons led by women who had lost loved ones to gun violence.
Kevin Davis
NYU School of Law
Kevin Davis, who joined NYU from a professorship at the University of Toronto, works on commercial and financial law aspects of law and development and related issues of governance. He has particular expertise on Caribbean and small island economies and polities. Currently, he directs the IILJ's Financing Development Project. He is co-author of a major study of these issues with Michael Trebilcock (2005), and has also written an economic analysis of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention.
Raj M. Desai
Georgetown University and Brookings
Raj M. Desai is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Wolfensohn Center for Development at the Brookings Institution, and Associate Professor of International Development in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
For the past eight years, Desai has taught courses on comparative and international political economy at Georgetown University. His work focuses on problems of economic reform, poverty, and international development. Previously, Desai was a member of the core team for the World Bank's World Development Report team. He has also served as a consultant to the World Bank Group, the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Development Program, and other international organizations.
He has also taught at Harvard University and Charles University in Prague. In addition to being a co-author of A Better Investment Climate for Everyone (World Development Report 2005), he is co-editor of the forthcoming Can Russian Compete? and of Between State and Market: Mass Privatization in Transition Economies (1997). He as also authored articles on economic reform, entrepreneurship, and poverty alleviation.
William Easterly
NYU, Department of Economics
William Easterly is Professor of Economics at New York University, joint with Africa House, and Co-Director of NYU's Development Research Institute. He is editor of Aid Watch blog, Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and Co-Editor of the Journal of Development Economics. He is the author of The White Man’s Burden: How the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (Penguin, 2006), The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (MIT, 2001), 3 other co-edited books, and 59 articles in refereed economics journals. William Easterly received his Ph.D. in Economics at MIT.
He spent sixteen years as a Research Economist at the World Bank. He is on the board of the anti-malaria philanthropy, Nets for Life. His work has been discussed in media outlets like the Lehrer Newshour, National Public Radio, the BBC, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the New York Review of Books, the Washington Post, the Economist, the New Yorker, Forbes, Business Week, the Financial Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, and the Christian Science Monitor. Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the world’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals in 2008. His areas of expertise are the determinants of long-run economic growth, the political economy of development, and the effectiveness of foreign aid. He has worked in most areas of the developing world, most heavily in Africa, Latin America, and Russia. William Easterly is an associate editor of the American Economic Journals: Macroeconomics, the Journal of Comparative Economics and the Journal of Economic Growth.
Anna Gelpern
American University School of Law
Anna Gelpern is an Associate Professor at the American University Washington College of Law. Her research explores the legal and policy implications of international capital flows. She has published extensively on debt, development, and financial globalization, and has served on international commissions and expert groups on financial reform, responsible lending and borrowing.
She is a visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Before joining the AU WCL faculty, Professor Gelpern was an Associate Professor at Rutgers School of Law-Newark and Rutgers University Division of Global Affairs. She was an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2002-2003. Between 1996 and 2002, she served in legal and policy positions at the U.S. Treasury Department. Before entering government service, she practiced law with Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in New York and London.
Mitchell Kane
NYU School of Law
Mitchell Kane is Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, where his research includes the relationship between tax and economic development. Professor Kane previously worked at in the tax practice group at Covington & Burling, where he advised U.S. and European businesses on the tax consequences of complex international transactions.
Devesh Kapur
University of Pennsylvania, Political Science Dept.
Devesh Kapur is Director, Center for Advanced Study of India and holds the Madan Lal Sobti Professorship for the Study of Contemporary India, University of Pennsylvania. He is the coauthor of The World Bank: Its First Half Century; Give us your Best and Brightest: The Global Hunt for Talent and Its Impact on the Developing World; Public Institutions in India: Performance and Design. His book, Diaspora, Democracy and Development: The Impact of International Migration from India on India will be published by Princeton University Press in 2010.
Suhas Ketkar
Vanderbilt University
Suhas Ketkar is a recognized expert on emerging markets of Asia, Latin America and Europe. He is currently Professor of Economics and Director of the Graduate Program in Economic Development at Vanderbilt University.
Previously, he worked as a financial economist and strategist for twenty five years with several Wall Street firms including RBS Greenwich Capital, Credit Suisse First Boston and Marine Midland Bank. He was also Director of Sovereign Research at Fidelity Investments. He has acted as a consultant to the World Bank on several occasions. Over the years, he has taught emerging markets finance, international economics and economic development at several U.S. universities including NYU, the University of Michigan and Vanderbilt University.
While he has published widely on many diverse topics in economics, his current research is focused on innovative ways of raising development finance. Recently, he has co-edited a book with Dilip Ratha of the World Bank on Innovative Financing for Development (World Bank 2008).
Anup Malani
University of Chicago Law School
Anup Malani is a Professor of Law and the Aaron Director Research Scholar at the University of Chicago. He is also an editor of the Journal of Law and Economics; a University Fellow at Resources for the Future, Washington, D.C.; and a Research Affiliate for the Joint Center for Poverty Research at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago.
Mr. Malani teaches Health Law, Food and Drug Law, Insurance Law, Bankruptcy and Corporations. His research interests include law and economics (welfare evaluation of legal rules, empirical methods, compensation for mass torts), health economics (control of infectious disease, the conduct of clinical trials, medical malpractice liability, placebo effects, and heterogeneity in treatment effects of drugs and devices), and corporate law and finance (executive compensation, the role of nonprofit firms). He has had articles published in top law reviews and economics journals, including the Harvard Law Review and the Journal of Political Economy. Mr. Malani clerked for the Hon. Stephen F. Williams, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2000-2001 and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in 2001-2002. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago's Department of Economics in 2003.
Jill Manny
NYU School of Law
Jill Manny joined the faculty at New York University School of Law in 1993. In June of 1995, she assumed the additional position of Executive Director of the National Center on Philanthropy and the Law at New York University School of Law. She teaches courses on Nonprofit Law, Tax-Exempt Organizations, and Tax Aspects of Charitable Giving. Professor Manny has written and spoken on issues impacting nonprofit organizations, including the evolution of the definition of “charitable,” tax issues for nonprofit religious organizations, exempt organizations and the internet, the exemption for amateur sports organizations, and nonprofit executive compensation. She is a member of the American Bar Association Exempt Organizations Committee and its Task Force on Supporting Organizations and Co-Chair of its Subcommittee on Judicial Developments. She is also a member of the Ethics and Accountability Committee of Independent Sector.
Rutsel Martha
International Fund for Agriculture and Development
Mr. Rutsel S.J. Martha, is the General Counsel in the Office of the Legal Counsel of the International Fund for Agricultural Development since April 2008. He joined IFAD from INTERPOL where he held the position of General Counsel and Director of Legal Affairs based in Lyon, France. Previously, Mr. Martha was the Minister of Justice of the Netherlands Antilles and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Netherlands Permanent Representation to the European Union. He also worked as Counsellor in the Legal Department of the International Monetary Fund and, prior to this, as Legal Advisor of the Central Bank of the Netherlands Antilles. Mr. Martha’s legal education started at the University of Leiden, The Netherlands where he concentrated on international law and organization. Thereafter, he obtained the degree of Master of Laws in International Legal Studies from the Washington College of Law of the American University in Washington, DC as well as the degree of Doctor of Laws at the University of Leiden, Law School in The Netherlands.
He has published extensively on international law, including The Jurisdiction to Tax in International Law (Kluwer, 1989), which was awarded Mitchell B. Carroll Prize of the International Fiscal Association. His most recent publications include: Mandate Issues in the International Fund for Agricultural Development (Forthcoming in: International Organizations Law Review; vol. 6:2, 2009), Tax Treatment of International Civil Servants (Published by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, December 2009), International Organizations and the Global Financial Crisis: The status of their Assets in Insolvency and Forced Liquidation Proceedings In: International Organizations Law Review; vol. 6:1/2009), Effects of Self-Government and Supra-Nationalism in the International Monetary Fund: the Case of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (In: Manchester Journal of International Economic Law; vol. 2:1/ 2005), and Capacity to Sue and Be Sued under WTO Law (In: World Trade Review; vol. 3:1 / 2004).
Heidi Metcalf
Center for Global Prosperity, Hudson Institute
Heidi Metcalf Little has worked extensively in both domestic and international policy arenas with a specific focus on issues of poverty and youth. She has taken a leading role developing policy, programming, philanthropic granting strategies, and public-private partnerships addressing global issues including HIV/AIDS, anti-human trafficking, and disaster relief as well as domestic issues such as foster care, workforce development and public safety.
Heidi is a senior fellow and deputy director of the Center for Global Prosperity at the Hudson Institute where she is responsible for managing the center and publishing the Index of Global Philanthropy and Remittances, the only comprehensive report of private financial flows from developed countries to the developing world.
As Vice President for Public Private Partnerships at Geneva Global, a global leader in international philanthropic advising, Heidi was responsible for the largest successful bid in PEPFAR’s New Partners Initiative (NPI). Heidi was the founding director of Geneva Global’s Washington office and responsible for the company’s government relations. Heidi has lived in Japan and Kenya.
As Policy Advisor for Public Safety to the Governor of Virginia, Heidi was responsible for creating a program to put non-violent offenders to work across the Commonwealth in response to the Parole Abolition Reform. As the Governor’s Legislative Liaison, Heidi worked closely with State Senators and Representatives throughout the implementation of Welfare Reform.
At the end of the Governor’s term, Heidi worked with a local philanthropist to found award-winning Partnership for the Future (PFF), which under her leadership, grew to be the largest privately funded work-force development and college preparatory program in the Commonwealth.
Additionally, Heidi served as Chief of Staff for the Administration of Children and Families within the US Department of Health and Human Services. She began her career at Procter & Gamble and spent a year in a research fellowship at the Ethics & Public Policy Center.
Jonathan Morduch
NYU Wagner
Jonathan Morduch is Professor of Public Policy and Economics at New York University's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. He is also Managing Director of the Financial Access Initiative (http://www.financialaccess.org). His research focuses on international development, poverty and financial access. Professor Morduch is co-author of The Economics of Microfinance (MIT Press 2005, 2nd edition 2010) and Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day (Princeton 2009). He has taught on the Economics faculty at Harvard University, and has held fellowships or visiting positions at Stanford, Princeton, and the University of Tokyo. Professor Morduch was the chair of the United Nations Committee on Poverty Statistics and has been a member of the UN Advisors Group on Inclusive Financial Sectors and the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Financial Empowerment. He advises Pro Mujer and the Grameen Foundation and is a member of SafeSave in Dhaka and the Editorial Boards of the World Bank Economic Review, Journal of Economic Perspectives, and Journal of Globalization and Development. Professor Morduch holds a BA from Brown and a Ph.D. from Harvard, both in Economics. Morduch was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in December 2008 in recognition of his work on microfinance.
Camilla Nestor
Grameen Foundation
Camilla Nestor joined Grameen Foundation in August 2005 and previously served as Growth Guarantees Manager and Director of the Capital Management and Advisory Center. She was appointed Vice President for Microfinance in April 2009. She has 14 years of experience in microfinance and commercial banking.
Before joining Grameen Foundation, she worked in Citigroup’s Structured Corporate Finance Department where she executed credit-enhanced debt financings for emerging markets firms in Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Prior to joining Citi, she spent five years on the ground in Southeast Asia, the Balkans, and Africa working with microfinance institutions on start-up, new product development, and capital raising. Camilla speaks Bahasa Indonesia and is conversant in French.
Yaw Nyarko
NYU Department of Economics
Yaw Nyarko is a Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Science. He is a theoretical economist, whose current work focuses on two main areas: (1) models where the economic actors engage in active learning about their environments and (2) human capital models of economic growth and development. He is the author of many published research papers and is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including many from the National Science Foundation. He has served as Editor/Associate Editor on a number of academic economics journals and has been a consultant to many organizations including the World Bank, the United Nations, and the Social Science Research Council.
Maria Santos Valentin
Open Society Institute
Maria Santos Valentin is General Counsel to the Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF) and Deputy General Counsel for the Open Society Institute, the New York based headquarters of the foundation network established and funded by financier and philanthropist, George Soros. SEDF’s mission is to alleviate poverty and community deterioration by making program related investments – in the form of equity, loans, guarantees and deposits – in selected banks, microfinance institutions, funds and social enterprise projects worldwide. Since its inception in 1997, SEDF has made over 35 program related investments totaling more than $60 million worldwide.
Prior to joining SEDF she worked as an international corporate securities lawyer for Brown & Wood (now Sidley Austin) and Clifford Chance where she worked on emerging market transactions in Latin America and Eastern Europe. She also worked as senior commercial associate with the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a U.S. government agency that provides financial assistance to U.S. persons making foreign investments.
Dennis Whittle
GlobalGiving
Dennis Whittle is CEO of GlobalGiving, which he co-founded in late 2000 after a career in the official aid sector. GlobalGiving is the world’s leading marketplace for international philanthropy. It allows qualified community-based groups around the world to post projects, and anyone in the world to fund them. Updates are posted directly to the site and automatically sent to donors, who can provide feedback and ask questions. GlobalGiving is also piloting a beneficiary demand and feedback mechanisms to ensure that communities are getting the projects they want and are able to provide real-time comments during implementation. Tens of thousands of individual donors, as well as many leading Fortune 500 companies, use GlobalGiving.
From 1997 to 2000, Dennis co-led the World Bank's Corporate Strategy and Innovation units, including the team that created the Development Marketplace. From 1992-1997, he led a variety of initiatives in the Bank's Russia program, including housing reform and energy efficiency projects. From 1987-92, Dennis was an economist in the World Bank's Jakarta office advising the Indonesian Ministries of Finance and National Development, and managing projects in the agriculture and forestry sectors. Before joining the World Bank in 1986, Dennis worked in the Philippines with the Asian Development Bank and with USAID.
Eric Zolt
UCLA Law School
Eric Zolt is the Michael H. Schill Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law. Before joining UCLA, he was a partner in the Chicago law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, where he specialized in individual and corporate tax matters. Before practicing law, Professor Zolt was on the research staff of the Center for Policy Alternatives, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
While on leave from UCLA, he served in the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 1989 through 1992. Professor Zolt continues to serve as a consultant to the Treasury Department, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In the last 20 years, he has provided tax policy advice in over 30 countries. Professor Zolt served first as Deputy Tax Legislative Counsel in the Office of Tax Policy. In 1991, Professor Zolt founded and served as the Director of Treasury’s Tax Advisory Program for Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union.
In 2002, Professor Zolt co-founded and served as the first Chair of the Executive Committee of the Southern African Tax Institute, a training and research institute for government tax officials in Africa. This program, now called the African Tax Institute, has provided training to over 1,000 tax officials and academics from 24 African countries.
