1. Hometown: Pittsburgh, PA
2. Current city: Washington, DC
4. Other institutions attended & degrees/graduation year: The College of William and Mary, B.A., 2007
5. Current Role: Director of Responsible Sourcing at the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA)
6. How did your career start and what are some highlights? I began my career working in international development in La Paz, Bolivia. I was focused on value chain/market linkages, which gave me the opportunity to better understand the connection with the private sector in terms of promoting market opportunities and sustainable economic development. After graduating from MSFS, I worked for the World Bank, which provided the opportunity to interview municipal governments on how they achieved high levels of GDP growth per capita (especially when this growth far exceeded the national average). The takeaways from these interviews reinforced what I learned in the IBD program, including the benefits of foreign direct investment, the need to improve investment (or the “enabling”) environment, etc. I transitioned into the private sector in 2015, and have worked both in-house for a company and in advisory roles, advising on strategy and best practices for responsible sourcing as it pertains to addressing the risks of forced labor and child labor in the supply chain. In my current role, I support our member companies in identifying risks in their mineral supply chains and engaging with governments, upstream supply chain actors, and civil society to address these risks.
7. What is your favorite IBD memory? I think it was sometime in my second year when my professors remarked that I made the “transition” from thinking like an NGO to thinking like a private sector actor. You have to be able to understand the points of view of all of your stakeholders in order to be effective at building multi-stakeholder solutions.
8. How did your experience in IBD prepare you for your career? I think the sentence above summarizes it well. IBD helped me to understand the conditions that are critical to comprehend in order to work at the intersection of business and development, e.g., what does your supply chain look like? what are the prices and operating costs? what is the leverage of all of each of the actors involved? What are their incentives and disincentives to act differently?
9. What was your most memorable IBD course and why (please list a GBUS course)? I may not have the precise titles but I think it was BINS by Professor Moran and an International Business Risk Management course by Professor West