JUDGES
The judges for this competition consisted of an independent panel of experts from diverse fields including economics, business consulting, micro-lending, foreign relations and public policy. The John Templeton Foundation would like to express our thanks for their guidance and insight.
Brief Biographical Sketches of “What Works” Judges:
William Baumol is Professor of Economics at New York University and Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Economist at Princeton University. His main area of research is market structure and pricing. Dr. Baumol has written over 500 peer-reviewed journal articles and books. He has served as president of the American Economic Association, the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, the Eastern Economic Association, and the Atlantic Economic Society. He is currently a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Professor Baumol was a candidate in 2003 for the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Jagdish Bhagwati is described as the most creative international trade theorist of his generation and is a leader in the fight for freer trade worldwide. He is currently University Professor at Columbia University and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was Economic Policy Adviser to the Director General, GATT (1991-93), and served as an advisor to both the UN on Globalization and the World Trade Organization. Dr. Bhagwati has published more than three hundred articles and fifty volumes, including his most recent book, In Defense of Globalization (Oxford, 2004). He founded the Journal of International Economics in 1971 and Economics & Politics in 1989.
Michael Fairbanks is Chairman of the OFT Group, a competitiveness consulting firm comprised of leading strategy experts. He has led projects in more than 35 countries and 20 industrial sectors, from petrochemicals in Colombia to defense conversion in the former Soviet Union. He has given over a thousand competitiveness strategy seminars to universities and public and private sector decision makers. Michael has also been a keynote speaker at two World Bank Annual Meetings. He has contributed a chapter in the best-selling anthology Culture Matters (2000) and is co-author of Plowing the Sea: Nurturing the Hidden Sources of Growth in the Developing World (1997). His works have been translated into ten languages including Serbian and Vietnamese.
David Green is a pioneer in the manufacture and distribution of advanced health care products for patients in the developing world who could otherwise not afford them. In 1983, he began working with the Seva Foundation’s Sight Program at Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai, India. Today, he creates production facilities by integrating engineers, technicians, distributors, and financiers. David established India’s Aurolab to manufacture intraocular lenses, low-cost needles, sutures, and hearing aids. These products are distributed in more than 85 countries. David also founded Project Impact, Inc., a nonprofit organization that develops, manufactures, and distributes affordable medical technologies to communities in India, Nepal, Tanzania, Egypt, Malawi, El Salvador, and Guatemala. David is a MacArthur Fellow and in 2004 he was selected as a “Schwab Entrepreneur” by the Schwab Foundation.
John Hatch, a Fulbright-trained economist and international development expert, founded the Foundation for International Community Assistance (FINCA) in 1984. Its purpose is to provide the poorest families, particularly those headed by single-mothers, with loans to finance self-employment activities capable of generating additional household income. Believing that the poor lack neither ambition nor skill, but simply resources, John helped to conceive and launch the “village banking” method of micro-financing. Today, the village banking method is practiced in more than 32 countries. FINCA has a repayment rate of 97%, and has assisted over 600,000 families. At least 40 other nonprofit agencies have launched an additional 105 village banking programs and collectively these organizations have reached another 2 million families worldwide.
Brad Lips has served as Chief Operating Officer of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation since 2000. Atlas is an organization dedicated to creating and assisting market-oriented think tanks around the world. Brad has also conducted research on electricity deregulation and IT policy at The Progress & Freedom Foundation. He worked at Smith Barney for two years as an equity research associate analyzing health care and staffing services companies. Brad co-authored The Reagan Vision, released by the Goldwater Institute in 2004.
Yann Risz is the COO and founding partner of The Next Practice, a strategic advisory firm which enables the world’s leading companies to leverage the emerging trends that are reshaping the face of competition. Spanning 30+ developed and developing markets, Yann has been an entrepreneur, a Fortune 500 company executive, and a strategy consultant. He has also served as director of a UN Commission on the Private Sector and Development, which brought together leaders from business, government and academia, to rethink development by more effectively involving the private sector.
