Lisa E. Sachs
DirectorBiography
Lisa Sachs is the Director of the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment. She joined the VCC in 2008 and became Associate Director in 2009 and Director in 2012. Since joining the VCC, she developed the workstream on natural resources and sustainable development, developing a robust research portfolio and overseeing advisory work in Mozambique, Guinea, Tanzania, Malawi and Timor-Leste on resource-based development. Her academic research focuses on extractive industries, foreign investment, corporate responsibility, human rights, and integrated economic development. She is a member of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network thematic group on the Good Governance of Extractive and Land Resources. She received a B.A. from Harvard University and a J.D. and a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University, where she was a James Kent Scholar and recipient of the Parker School Certificate in International and Comparative Law.
Kaitlin Y. Cordes
Lead Law and Policy ResearcherBiography
Kaitlin Y. Cordes leads the VCC’s work on investments in land and agriculture. In addition, she focuses on the intersection of human rights and international investments, including the social impacts of FDI. Prior to joining the VCC, she worked with the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch (focusing on farmworkers in South Africa) and served as an advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food (concentrating primarily on large-scale land acquisitions, contract farming, and the rights of agricultural workers). She is the co-editor of Accounting for Hunger: The Right to Food in the Era of Globalisation (Hart, 2011).She holds a J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she was a James Kent Scholar, a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar, and recipient of the Valentin J.T. Wertheimer Prize and a Parker School Certificate in Foreign and Comparative Law. She has a B.A. in Political Science and International Studies from Northwestern University.
Paulo Cunha
Associate Director of OperationsBiography
Paulo Cunha joined the VCC in April 2013 from the Earth Institute's Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI), where for over five years he was the senior officer responsible for business operations and administration of the project, as well as coordination of a number of MCI’s sustainable development and investment activities. Previously, he served as the Project Manager for the Earth Institute’s advisory project in São Tomé and Príncipe (STP), working with Columbia Law School to provide technical and legal assistance to the country’s Parliamentary Oil Commission. He coordinated the project’s work on oil revenue management, extractive industries transparency and development planning. He has also worked as a researcher or consultant with the Revenue Watch Institute, the Swiss Network for International Studies, the United Nations Development Program and the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, and has previous experience in the human rights and international law fields. He has a Bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a Master’s degree in Economic and Political Development from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).
Barry Green
Environmental Health and Remediation SpecialistBiography
Barry Green’s area of interest is economic compensation for environmental damages in large scale mining in developing countries. This interest is derived from extensive professional experience in the environmental compliance/remediation field. He has previously taught introductory economics, and engineering economics at Michigan Technological University. His international experience includes positions with the United Nations Development Program in Papua New Guinea, and Uzbekistan, short-term relief in Nigeria, environmental work in Hungary and Croatia, research in Chile, economic risk assessment in Guatemala, and three years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador and St. Lucia. He has an M.S. in Environmental Science-Waste Management/Resource Recovery from University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, an M.S. in Mineral/Resource Economics from Michigan Technological University, and a Ph.D. in Economics Environmental Science and Community Development from Washington State University.
Lise Johnson
Lead Investment Law & Policy ResearcherBiography
Lise Johnson’s work at the VCC centers on analyzing treaty-based investor-state arbitrations, and examining the implications those cases have for host countries' domestic policies and development strategies. In addition, she concentrates on key institutional and procedural aspects of the legal framework, including efforts to increase transparency in and legitimacy of investor-state dispute settlement. She has a B.A. from Yale University, J.D. from University of Arizona, LL.M. from Columbia Law School, and is admitted to the bar in California. Prior to joining the VCC, she was a legal consultant for the International Institute for Sustainable Development, and a fellow at the Center for International Environmental Law. She also spent four years as a litigator at the international law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, representing clients in a variety of environmental, commercial, and regulatory matters.
Nicolas Maennling
Economics & Policy ResearcherBiography
Nicolas Maennling is a development economist with experience in the public and private sectors. From 2011-2012, he worked within the Ministry of Finance in Timor-Leste as part of the Earth Institute’s advisory project to the Government, advising on issues such as inflation, macroeconomic forecasting and fiscal sustainability. Previous to his employment at the Earth Institute, he spent three years in Mozambique, first as the resident ODI fellow in the Ministry of Industry and Trade working on the design and implementation of Mozambique’s industrial policy, and then as a consultant for a private bulk commodity shipping company (LBH Group) and the UK Department for International Development (DfID) on the resource extraction projects in northern Mozambique. He received a BSc in Economics from the University of Birmingham (UK) and an MSc in Economics from the University of Warwick (UK).
Jacky Mandelbaum
Lead Law & Policy ResearcherBiography
Jacky Mandelbaum's work focuses on optimizing legal frameworks for promoting sustainable development from extractive industry investments, with the objective of balancing the country's interest in capturing the benefit of the resources while remaining competitive. She is undertaking research and provides advice on issues related to transparency, capital gains tax, local content requirements and competitive bidding. Jacky completed her law degree at the University of Melbourne and prior to joining the VCC, was a senior associate at a leading Australian law firm, legal counsel at CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, and acted in an advisory capacity for Malawi's National Commission for Science and Technology.
Nancy Siporin
Executive CoordinatorBiography
Nancy Siporin received a BA (with honors) in Communications, Arts and Sciences from Queens College, New York. After numerous years in the advertising industry, where she served as Manager, Network Television Programming at a large ad agency, she went on to work in television production, in areas ranging from broadcast operations to publicity, before eventually becoming a casting director and owner of an independent casting company. Her diverse background also includes serving as Senior Recruiting Manager for a medical market research company, responsible for recruiting physician specialists for both qualitative and quantitative studies.
Sophie Thomashausen
Law and Policy ResearcherBiography
Sophie Thomashausen's work at the VCC focuses on optimizing legal frameworks to promote sustainable development from public-private partnerships and infrastructure-related investments around the extractive industry. She is undertaking research and provides advice on issues related to extractive industry, water, public-private partnerships, corporate responsibility, human rights, and local content. She received an A.B. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs at Princeton University, an M.A. in law from Cambridge University, England, and an LL.M. from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. She is admitted to the bar in New York State (2013) and England and Wales (2007). Prior to joining the VCC, she was a law fellow at the Public International Law and Policy Group. She also spent seven years at the international law firm Allen & Overy LLP in London and Sao Paulo, five years of which were spent as an associate in the Project Finance group working on, among other things, infrastructure projects in the Middle East and Africa. From 2010- 2012, Sophie also worked on a number of law capacity-building projects in Rwanda.
Perrine Toledano
Lead Economics & Policy ResearcherBiography
Perrine Toledano has worked as a consultant for several non-profit organizations (World Bank, DFID, Revenue Watch Institute) and private sector companies (Natixis Corporate Investment Bank, Ernst and Young). Her experience includes auditing, financial analysis, IT for capital markets, public policy evaluation, cross-border project management and natural resource contract modeling. In terms of the latter, she has built financial models for many mineral and oil contracts in order to assess how fiscal and non-fiscal benefits are shared between countries and industry, discuss competitiveness and fairness, and envision changes in the fiscal framework based on sensitivity analyses of the fiscal and market variables. Specializing in natural resources investments, she is researching and advising on issues such as transparency, competitive bidding, and optimal legal clauses for development benefits. She is also leading work on economic diversification, including leveraging extractive industry investments in rail, port and energy infrastructure for the broader development needs of the country as well as optimizing direct and indirect local job creation from the investments. She has a Masters of Business Administration from ESSEC (Paris) and a Masters of Public Administration from Columbia University.
Senior Fellows Top
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Albert Bressand
Biography
Albert Bressand is Senior Fellow at the VCC, and Special Adviser to Andris Piebalgs, the Commissioner for Development at the EU Commission in Brussels.
From 2006 to 2012, he was a professor and the Executive Director of the Center for Energy, Marine Transportation and Public Policy at SIPA, Columbia University.From 2003 to 2006 he led the Global Business Environment department in Royal Dutch Shell's global headquarters in London where he designed a new generation of Shell Global Scenarios around an enhanced, original methodology for risk and opportunity assessment. Previously, he cofounded and acted as managing director of Promethée, a nonprofit, Paris-based think tank specializing in the emerging global networked economy and its implications for corporate strategies, capital markets, and international economic relations. Earlier in his career, he served as Special Adviser to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of France, Deputy Director of the French Council on Foreign Relations (IFRI) and was member of the Policy Planning Staff in the Office of Robert McNamara at The World Bank.
Currently, he is also a member of the faculty of the World Economic Forum and has chaired a number of sessions at the Davos Annual Meetings. He serves on the Board of the New York Energy Forum, of the New York Maritime Initiative (NYMAR). He has contributed to several major Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) studies on the world energy scene, notably the CERA 'Dawn of a New Age' scenarios and the 'Securing the Future' study on EU-Russia gas relations. He is also former directeur de collection at Editions du Seuil in Paris, and he just finished writing ‘2112’, the first novel in his Twenty Second Century Trilogy. His most recent publications include "Foreign Direct Investment in Oil and Gas: Recent Trends and Strategic Drivers", in Yearbook on Foreign on International Investment Law and Policies (2009) and "The Future of Producer-Consumer Cooperation: A Policy Perspective" in Global Energy Governance: the new rules of the game (2010). He earned his advanced scientific degrees at École Polytechnique in Paris, École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées and Paris-Sorbonne, and a Master in Public Administration and a PhD in Political Economy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
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Andrea K. Bjorklund
Biography
For the year 2012, Andrea K. Bjorklund was Visiting Professor (Guest of the L. Yves Fortier Chair in International Arbitration and International Commercial Law) at McGill University Faculty of Law. While at McGill she taught courses on the law and practice of international trade, as well as a seminar on international investment law and a specialized course on NAFTA Chapter 11. She is working with Andrew Newcombe of the University of Victoria on an investment law casebook that is to be published by Oxford University Press.
She is Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis, where she has taught courses in international arbitration and litigation, international trade, international investment, public international law, international business transactions, conflict of laws, and contracts. She is co-rapporteur of the International Law Association's Study Group on the Role of Soft-Law Instruments in International Investment Law and is an adviser to the American Law Institute’s project on restating the U.S. law of international commercial arbitration. She also serves as Director of Studies for the American Branch of the International Law Association.
She has written extensively on investor-state arbitration issues, and has published chapters in many books, such as theOxford Handbook of International Investment Law, as well as pieces in several journals, including the Hastings Law Journal, the American Review of International Arbitration, andthe Virginia Journal of International Law. She is listed in the International Who’s Who of Commercial Arbitration and is on the roster of panelists who hear NAFTA Chapter 19 proceedings.
Prior to entering the academy, she worked on the NAFTA arbitration team in the U.S. Department of State's Office of the Legal Adviser, and also worked for Commissioner Thelma J. Askey on the U.S. International Trade Commission and in private practice at Miller & Chevalier in Washington, D.C. She clerked for Sam J. Ervin, III, on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Professor Bjorklund received her B.A. in History and French from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, her M.A. in French Studies from New York University, and her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1994. She is admitted to practice before the District of Columbia and Maryland Bars.
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Karl P. Sauvant
Resident Senior FellowBiography
Karl P. Sauvant is Resident Senior Fellow at the VCC; Adjunct Senior Research Scholar and Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School; Fellow, Academy of International Business; Honorary Fellow, European International Business Academy; and Senior Advisor, Investment Advisory Committee, China International Investment Council (formerly the China Federation of Investment Promotion Agencies). He is also Guest Professor at Nankai University, China.
Until February 2012, Dr. Sauvant was the Founding Executive Director of the VCC. There he launched the Yearbook on International Investment Law and Policy, the Columbia FDI Perspectives, the Columbia FDI Profiles, the annual International Investment Conference, the Investment Law and Policy Speaker Series, and the Emerging Markets Global Players project. He teaches a seminar on FDI and public policy and has published widely in the international investment area. Until October 2011, he was also the Co-Director of the Millennium Cities Initiative at the Earth Institute, responsible for helping African cities attract investment.
Until July 2005, he was Director of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's (UNCTAD’s) Investment Division (DITE), the focal point in the UN system for matters related to FDI, as well as a major interface with the private sector. His responsibilities included managing the Division; promoting international consensus-building in the areas of FDI, technology and enterprise development; providing intellectual leadership for policy-oriented research; and conceptualizing and supervising technical assistance activities in this field. He had joined the United Nations in 1973 and, as of 1975, focused his work on matters related to FDI. In 1988, he became responsible for the Organization's policy analysis work on FDI. In 2001, he became Director of DITE. While at the UN, he created, in 1991, the prestigious annual World Investment Report, of which he was the lead author until 2004. In 1992, he founded the journal Transnational Corporations, serving as its editor until 2005. He provided intellectual leadership and guidance to a series of 25 monographs on key issues related to international investment agreements, which were published in 2004/05 in three volumes, and he edited, together with Dr. John H. Dunning, a 20-volume Library on Transnational Corporations (published by Routledge). His name is associated with a great number of United Nations publications on FDI over his three decades of service in the UN. He received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Fellows Top
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Nicholas Garrett
Biography
Nicholas Garrett is a Director and the Head of Sustainability of the globally operating advisory firm Resource Consulting Services (www.resourceglobal.co.uk). He is an experienced natural resources and sustainability expert, who has worked as lead consultant in 25+ countries on more than 50+ projects. He provides professional and innovative strategy advisory, research and training services in the global extractive industries sectors, as well as in the conflict minerals, forestry and land investment sectors. He is an in-demand expert in 8 core areas: a) external affairs; b) aligning sustainability and company strategy; c) responsible supply chains, particularly conflict-free supply chains; d) strategic community investment; e) artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM); f) country access strategies, incl. institutional and stakeholder analyses; g) aligning human rights and company strategy; h) Chinese (and BRICS) investment in Africa. He advises high-profile corporations, public and not-for-profit clients, helping them address their short-term requirements and securing their long-term value. His clients include AngloGold Ashanti, Nokia, the British, German, Japanese and US Governments, the World Bank, the EITI, the WWF and many others.
Nicholas holds a Masters Degree in International Development Management from the London School of Economics (LSE) and he is a PhD candidate at the Freie Universität Berlin. He writes under the tutelage of Transparency International Founder and former Chairman of the EITI, Peter Eigen on the prospects of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s mineral wealth to contribute to sustainable development. He has lived in Argentina, the DRC, South Africa and Europe. He is proficient in English, French, Spanish and German. He publishes regularly and presents on key issues in the natural resources sectors.
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Mark Kantor
Biography
Mark Kantor was a partner in the Corporate and Project Finance Groups of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy until he retired from the firm. He currently serves as an arbitrator and mediator, and teaches courses in International Business Transactions and in International Arbitration as an Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. Mr. Kantor is a qualified arbitrator and a member of numerous arbitration panels. He is a Fellow of The Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and is listed in Who's Who Commercial Arbitration, Chambers USA (International Arbitration), and The Best Lawyers in America (International Arbitration; Washington, D.C.).
Mr. Kantor is the incoming Editor in Chief of Transnational Dispute Management, an on-line global portal focusing on transnational disputes. He is also a member of the ADR Advisory Board of the International Law Institute, the Editorial Board of Global Arbitration Review, the Board of Editors of the Journal of World Energy Law and Business and the Board of Editors of The Banking Law Journal. He is Vice-Chair of the DC Bar International Dispute Resolution Committee, having served as Chair from 2004 until 2007. He serves as the Chair of the Washington, D.C. chapter of The Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. Among other publications, he is the author of Valuation for Arbitration: Compensation Standards, Valuation Methods and Expert Evidence (Kluwer Law International 2008), named Best Book of 2008 in the OGEMID Awards. Additional publications and background can be found at http://clik.to/kantor. -
Rahim Moloo
Biography
Rahim advises sovereigns, international organizations and multinationals on matters of international law and in international disputes. He has published several articles and given several presentations and lectures on international arbitration and public international law. He is currently a member of the international arbitration group at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP, based in New York; a Fellow at the Vale Columbia Center; and co-chair of the Private International Law Section of the American Society of International Law. Before joining Freshfields, he was the General Counsel for the University of Central Asia (UCA), founded by a Treaty between three Central Asian Republics and His Highness the Aga Khan. While at UCA, he worked with the three governments toimplement their obligations under the Founding Treaty, with the aim of promoting sustainable development in the transitioning economies and communities in Central Asia through the establishment of a world-class institution of higher education. He has also practiced as an attorney in the international arbitration group at White & Case LLP in Washington, D.C. and in his home-country of Canada where the leading national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, named him a "face of the future."
Rahim has a Bachelors of Science from Queen’s University (Canada). He has law degrees from the University of British Columbia and New York University School of Law, where he graduated as valedictorian, and has also been a visiting fellow at the Lauterpacht Center for International Law at the University of Cambridge.
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Andrea Saldarriaga
Biography
Andrea Saldarriaga is a civil law and international lawyer with extensive experience in investment law, international arbitration and sustainable development. As an associate at various law firms – including Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer – she spent several years working closely with corporations in structuring their complex investment transactions and defending their interests in commercial and investment arbitrations. Since launching her independent practice in 2007, she has acted as arbitrator and worked on a range of collaborative initiatives with international organizations as well as non-profit and academic institutions involving investment, corruption, human rights, corporate social responsibility and sustainable development issues. She currently co-leads the VCC research project on “Understanding challenges and developing tools to integrate foreign investment and sustainable development” with Lise Johnson.
She is a member of the International Investment Agreements expert network of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and presently functions as ambassador for the promotion of the UNCTAD Investment Policy Framework for Sustainable Development. She also collaborated with the work of John Ruggie, UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, as part of the group of experts that advised him on investment. She participated in the consultation process and provided advice in the preparation of the paper entitled “Principles for responsible contracts”, an addendum to the report presented by the SR to the Human Rights Council on June 2011.
Andrea teaches international arbitration and investment law at University Paris X Nanterre and ESSEC Business School in Paris. She has also lectured in various universities and taken part in numerous seminars and conferences in Europe, the United States and Latin America. Andrea acted as international editorial coordinator for Revista Internacional de Arbitraje – a Spanish-language review distributed in Latin America – for almost seven years and publishes regularly in her areas of expertise.
Research Associates Top
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Victor Chen
EMGP Global Coordinator and EditorBiography
Victor Zitian Chen is the Global Coordinator and Editor of the Emerging Market Global Players (EMGP) project at the VCC. He is an Assistant Professor of International Management at The Belk College of Business, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he teaches global business at both undergraduate and MBA levels. His research focuses on the integration of market- and non-market strategies under different institutional configurations (e.g., rules of the game of the markets, politics, and civil societies). In addition to his academic career, he was active in both the international economic and commercial arenas. He served as an economic officer at the coordination office of the Asia Pacific Gateway and Corridor Initiative (APGCI) at Government of Canada in 2010-11, where his role included supporting Minster Stockwell Day’s Asian business missions. In 2008-09 he was a Research Fellow at the Asian Pacific Foundation of Canada; and in 2006-07, he was a founding partner of an Ottawa-based foreign investment policy consulting company. He co-founded the journal Transnational Corporations Review, advised by such leading scholars as Dr. Elinor Ostrom, 2009 Novel laureate in economics, and Dr. KarlSauvant, and retains an honorary role as Associate Editor. He has completed all three exams of Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), and his research has been widely quoted by such major public media as Globe and Mail, Business News Network (BNN), Vancouver Sun, and Singtao Dailyamong others. He received his Ph.D. in Strategy and International Business from Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University.
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Alev Günay
EMGP Manager and EditorBiography
Alev Günay has crafted a career in international business development in both the private and public sector, facilitating international investment, and designing and executing business development and marketing strategies on a global scale. In 2007 she launched the Investment Support and Promotion Agency of Turkey in the United States and served as its Director through 2011. Fluent in Turkish and French, her background includes working for the French government, creating marketing communications strategies and content for the Office of Tourism’s American market. She holds a MSc. in International Business Development from the Université de Neuchâtel in Switzerland, and a B.A. in International Studies with a concentration in International Business and French from Nazareth College of Rochester.
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Padma Mallampally
Editor, Columbia FDI ProfilesBiography
Padma Mallampally is the editor of Columbia FDI Profiles. She has been involved in research and analysis on foreign direct investment and transnational corporations for the past several years. She was formerly on the staff of the Division on Investment, Technology and Enterprise, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Geneva), where she headed the Development Issues Section of the Division’s Investment Issues and Analysis Branch. Prior to that, she worked for the United Nations Center on Transnational Corporations (New York) and the ESCAP/UNCTC Joint Unit on Transnational Corporations (Bangkok). Since her retirement from service at UNCTAD, she has continued to work in the area of foreign direct investment and related issues as a consultant. Ms. Mallampally holds a Ph.D. degree in economics from the University of Chicago.
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Jennifer Reimer
Managing Editor, Columbia FDI PerspectivesBiography
Jennifer Reimer completed her J.D. at University of California, Davis in 2011. She graduated from California State University, Fresno with an M.B.A. in 2008 and she received a B.S. in Business Administration with an Option in Finance from California State University, Fresno in 2006. She is the Managing Editor of the Columbia FDI Perspectives. Previously, she served as a Trustee for the California State University system, which is the largest system of higher education in the United States. She has also worked in various roles as a research assistant, law clerk and editor. Her interest areas include FDI and international investment arbitration.
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Julien Topal
Biography
Julien Topal received his BA and Master of Research in philosophy from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands (NL) and a Master of Research in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy. He worked as a lecturer in political philosophy at Maastricht University (NL) for three years and is currently in the final stages of his PhD at the EUI. His research focuses on theories of justice, corporate responsibilities, the investment regime and poverty. Julien is also a member of the Advisory Editorial Board of the European Journal of Legal Studies.
Research Assistants Top
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Nadia Ahmad
Biography
Nadia B. Ahmad earned her B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley, J.D. from the University of Florida, and LL.M. in Environmental and Natural Resources Law at the University of Denver with a specialization in Sustainable Development and Renewable Energy Law and Policy. At the University of Denver, she worked on the editorial team for the International Bar Association’s Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law. Her research explores the intersections of environmental law, energy law, and natural resources law with international trade, energy justice, and corporate best practices.
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Ran Dong
Biography
Ran Dong received her Master of Public Administration, concentrating on Economic Policy Management, from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), and Bachelor of Economics in Finance from Nankai University, China. Before coming to the US in 2010, she worked at Shanghai Pudong Development Bank as a Financial Advisor for four years and completed an internship at the United Nations Development Program's (UNDP) Bureau of Africa. Her specialties are financial analysis, asset management and economic policy research in emerging markets.
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Ksenia Gal
Biography
Ksenia Gal is a Master of Laws in International Legal Studies candidate at New York University School of Law, focusing on international economic law. She received her first law degree at the Russian Academy of Justice in Moscow, Russia. After graduation she joined the Legal Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, where she worked on human rights, responsibility of states and international organizations and other issues of international law.
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Michal Gutelzon
Biography
Michal Gutelzon holds a Bachelor of Laws and a B.A (Cum Laude) from the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel and a Master of Laws (Magna Cum Laude) from Tel Aviv University in Israel. Until recently, she was an Associate at a leading Israeli law firm in the Environment & Climate Change Practice Group, and she continues to practice in diverse environmental matters from time to time. Currently, she is pursuing an Executive Master of Public Administration at SIPA, concentrating in environmental policy and sustainability management.
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Charles Harrison
Biography
Charles Harrison holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Pennsylvania State University, and a Master of Science degree from the University of Pennsylvania. With strong experience in both academic research and consulting, he has been responsible for a myriad of short-term and long-term domestic as well as international projects. He has experience in aspects of research and consulting pertaining to domestic and international business, investing in politically risky environments, strategic planning, product development, and market development.
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John Hauert
Biography
John Hauert is a doctoral candidate at the International Investment Law Centre Cologne, focusing on stabilization mechanisms in international investment law. He earned a Bachelor in International Relations from Sciences Po Paris, and a Masters in Global Business Law and Governance from Sciences Po Law School through a joint program with Columbia Law School and Université Paris 1. As an intern, he gained litigation and international arbitration experience with law firms in France, and also interned with the federal legislative and executive branches in Germany.
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Ryan Head
Biography
Ryan Head is a Research Assistant for the Timor-Leste Advisory Project. He previously worked for the Boston-based Pan African Acupuncture Project (P.A.A.P.), creating budgets and organizing fundraising events for their trainings in Uganda. Prior to P.A.A.P., Ryan spent four months in Kampala, Uganda, conducting an assessment of the nation’s public transportation system. He graduated from Oberlin College with a B.A. in Economics and a focus in International Economic Development. He volunteers with the Against Malaria Foundation and also works at the Jewish Community Center afterschool program.
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Shawn Lim
Biography
Shawn Lim is currently a J.D. candidate at Columbia Law School. Prior to coming to CLS, he read English law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Shawn’s research at the VCC primarily involves international investment law, foreign direct investment and public policy.
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Daniel Litwin
Biography
Daniel Litwin graduated from the McGill University Faculty of Law with a B.C.L./L.L.B. degree and currently serves as the Managing Editor of the Yearbook on International Investment Law & Policy. He has also worked on promoting regulatory reform and transparency in offshore financial centers and has presented his work at a number of international conferences. His current research focuses on international investment law, with a particular focus on corruption and transparency.
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Toochi Ngwangwa
Biography
Toochi Ngwangwa is currently a second year student at Columbia Law School. She is interested in development of African countries from private and grassroots organizations, especially the influence of Chinese government and businesses on this process. She is currently the president of the African Law School Association in the Law School.
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Prashant Reddy
Biography
Prashant P. Reddy is a candidate for Master of Public Administration focusing on International Finance and Economic Policy (IFEP) at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Prior to SIPA, he worked for Morgan Stanley’s Municipal Securities Group in San Francisco where he managed debt transactions for local, state, and regional entities. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of California Berkeley majoring in economics and political science and served as an intern in the Debt Management Office of the United States Treasury Department.
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Faraz Rojid
Biography
Faraz Rojid was previously a Legal Consultant in the International Investment Agreements Section of the Division on Investment of UNCTAD. He holds an LL.B (with Honors) from the University of London, an LL.M in International Economic Law and Policy (IELPO) from the University of Barcelona, and is pursuing a Graduate Diploma in International Relations (UOL) from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His current research interests focus on investment law and sustainable development.
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Clara Roorda
Biography
Clara Roorda is in her second year at the School of International Public Affairs (SIPA) where she will earn a Master’s degree in Public Administration with a concentration in environmental policy and management. She received a B.A. in Economics from Insper São Paulo in Brazil and studied for one year at the London School of Economics (LSE). Prior to coming to SIPA, she worked at a Research Institute from Insper São Paulo doing economic research about social inequalities in Brazil, and in the financial market for over three years at Credit Suisse Hedging Griffo doing macroeconomic research and financial advisory.
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Valentina Rosselli
Biography
Valentina Rosselli holds a B.A. in Economics from Universidad de Chile and is currently pursuing a Master in Public Administration with concentration in International Finance and Economic Policy at Columbia University. She worked as a research assistant on public policies at Centro de Microdatos, focusing on female participation in the job market in L.A. Subsequently, she led a joint project from Universidad de Chile´s Center for Advanced Research in Education and Center of Mathematical Modeling, and during this past year, gained experience in the private sector, assessing local and foreign clients from different industries.
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Polly Silverman
Biography
Polly Silverman holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University, majoring in mathematics, and is currently a J.D. candidate at Columbia Law School. Prior to returning to Columbia to study law, she worked in risk analytics at BlackRock in the New York office. She is interested in environmental law, entrepreneurial ventures and sustainable development.
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Tongtong Zhang
Biography
Tongtong Zhang graduated from Peking University in 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and a Bachelor of Economics. She worked for IBM China Corporation as an internal auditor for two years before joining the VCC. She is currently a first-year student of the Master of International Affairs program at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).
Related Faculty Top
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George A. Bermann
Senior Faculty AdvisorBiography
George A. Bermann is the Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Law, Walter Gellhorn Professor of Law, and Director of the European Legal Studies Center at Columbia Law School. He also teaches at Sciences Po (Paris) and College d’Europe (Bruges). He is Chief Reporter of the ALI Restatement of the US Law of International Commercial Arbitration; co-author of the UNCITRAL Guide to the New York Convention; Editor-in-Chief of the American Review of International Arbitration; founder and chair of the board of the Columbia Journal of European Law; former Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Comparative Law; and Director of the American Arbitration Association. He is the current President of the Académie Internationale de Droit Comparé and former President of the American Society of Comparative Law. He is an international commercial arbitrator and an expert on French, German, Swiss and EU Law, and transnational litigation and arbitration, and has authored many books and articles on these topics.
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Glenn Denning
Senior Faculty AdvisorBiography
Glenn Denning is the Director of the Center on Globalization and Sustainable Development and a professor of Professional Practice in International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He helped establish The MDG Centre, East and Southern Africa in Nairobi, Kenya, served as its first Director (2004 to 2009) and provided leadership to the Centre’s agenda in agriculture and rural development and its support to the African Green Revolution. He previously held senior management positions at the International Rice Research Institute and the World Agroforestry Centre, and has lived and worked in Asia and Africa for more than 30 years. He served on the UN Millennium Project Hunger Task Force (2004 to 2006) and is currently a member of the Senior Steering Group of the UN High Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis.
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Curtis J. Milhaupt
Senior Faculty AdvisorBiography
Curtis J. Milhaupt is the Parker Professor of Comparative Corporate Law and Fuyo Professor of Japanese Law at Columbia Law School. He is also a member of Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute. His research and teaching interests include the legal systems of East Asia (particularly Japan), comparative corporate governance, and law and economic development. His recent books include Law and Capitalism: What Corporate Crises Reveal about Legal Systems and Economic Development Around the World(2008) and Transforming Corporate Governance in East Asia (2008). He has been a member of several international project teams focused on major policy issues in Asia, including one charged with designing an “institutional blueprint” for a unified Korean peninsula. Previously, he practiced corporate law in New York and Tokyo with a major law firm. He holds a J.D. from Columbia Law School and a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame.
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Jeffrey D. Sachs
Co-Chair, Advisory BoardBiography
Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From 2002 to 2006, he was Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease and hunger by the year 2015. He is also Co-Founder and President of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization aimed at ending extreme global poverty. He is widely considered to be the leading international economic advisor of his generation. For more than 20 years he has been in the forefront of the challenges of economic development, poverty alleviation and enlightened globalization, promoting policies to help all parts of the world to benefit from expanding economic opportunities and wellbeing. He is author of hundreds of scholarly articles and many books, including the New York Times bestsellers Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (Penguin, 2008) and The End of Poverty (Penguin, 2005).