I had the privilege of visiting this beautiful country six years ago. (I call it Burma and not Myanmar because the latter name was introduced by the junta in a campaign of cultural homogenization. “Burma” is a relic of British colonialism, so pick your poison.) I was airborne on my way to Burma when the 2004 tsunami tore through the Indian Ocean. At my hotel in Yangon came rumors that several Burmese had died in the wave. No one knew how many or where exactly because the country has no real press. The junta has you, in life and in death.

While the rest of Southeast Asia held its breath for the tsunami postmortem, Burma slept in the junta’s steel embrace. It was a kingdom of muted monks, frail farmers, and hushed hawkers. The regime seemed to have the order it sought. I am not sure I saw a policeman, soldier, or any other authority in my ten days in Burma. Billboards were the thought police. One read:

“People’s Desire:
OPPOSE THOSE RELYING ON EXTERNAL ELEMENTS, ACTING AS STOOGES, HOLDING NEGATIVE VIEWS. OPPOSE THOSE TRYING TO JEOPARDIZE THE STABILITY OF THE STATE AND THE PROGRESS OF THE NATION. CRUSH ALL INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL ELEMENTS AS THE COMMON ENEMY.”

Burma’s is a drowsy, stifled hinterland. The economic malpractice of the junta keeps poverty at a suffocating level. Little in the way of commerce flows through those dirt roads. But that may be changing with the Burmese leadership pursuing a Gorbachev-like opening up of political and economic space.

Burma will thaw more slowly than did Eastern Europe with the fall of the Berlin Wall. For one, there is not a project of regional integration like the European Union for the Burmese to pursue. ASEAN does not offer the same economic and political rewards as the EU. Secondly, it remains to be seen if Burma will receive the same support in foreign aid that Eastern Europe did in the 1990′s. The junta still hold the keys to the country and foreign donors will be leery of committing aid to a notorious kleptocracy.

Finally, optimism in Burma is more important than optimism anywhere else. For people to come out from the shadow of the regime to start businesses and organize politically, they must be sufficiently convinced that the government is sincere in reform. The behavioral patterns of citizens will take a long while to adjust to a government that has only begun to change after 40 years.

They’re camped out in Tahrir again.

A tent city has sprung up to house those displeased with the foot dragging of the military men running Egypt. The scene is at once festive and urgent. Acoustic performances precede chants of “The people want the fall of the Field Marshall” (Tantawi, the head of the military council). And when the government allegedly cut the electricity in Tahrir last week, memories of the Revolution’s martyrs kept the square aglow until dawn.

Over the past few days, I’ve read many an Egyptian youth quoted in the paper saying something to the effect of: “Mubarak is gone, but his regime remains. We will not leave the square until we’re satisfied.”

And so a sort of rough, interactive check on power has taken place where the people occupy the square as a simple “no” vote on issues such as the pace of transition to a civilian government and Prime Minister Sharaf’s new cabinet picks. It is democracy in its chaotic, physical form, the only recourse of a people without democracy in writing.

The revolution must go on. For the sake of Egyptian dignity. For the sake of casting a compass for the Arab world. For the sake of shattering all of the hypocrisy and condescension that has gone into supporting Arab strongmen at the expense of the Arabs themselves. For the sake of seeing the odious old man of Sharm el Sheikh behind bars.

The Egyptian military still carries great respect among Egyptians of all backgrounds. But for this covenant to stay in tact, the council needs to reciprocate with greater respect for civil society. Rather than censoring the press, lecturing youth leaders of the Revolution, and maneuvering to write their power into the new Constitution, the generals should remember that this was a Revolution, and not a coup.

A few analysts have connected Egypt today with Turkey 20 years ago, when the Turks were stifled by a poor economy and a meddling army. Turkey’s military retains great power today, but is also a relatively healthy democracy with an average income of $13,000. The other path drawn from present-day Egypt is to Pakistan, where a civilian leadership cowers before the military and the economy runs on foreign aid.

Cultivating a strong civilian leadership starts in Tahrir, where this week the people’s chanting drowned out a military spokesman who came to appeal for patience. The people still want the fall of the regime, and in its place one of their own.

The market information system (MIS) service of FIT Uganda Limited is offered under the trade name Infotrade. Infotrade is engaged in collecting and disseminating agricultural commodity prices from 22 district markets around Uganda and some smaller markets too. Both wholesale and retail prices of over 40 commodities are captured by the agricultural market information advisors (AMIAs). AMIAs are local traders, merchants, etc. in the various markets who are appointed by Infotrade collect market prices for a fee. The AMIAs capture market prices thrice a week and send it to Infotrade where it is compiled and collated in a central database after the data is verified.

This information is then disseminated on a weekly basis (mostly on Mondays) mainly through weekly reports which not only provide price information but also analyse price movements. The weekly report is made available on the Infotrade website as well as emailed to subscribers. Secondly, average weekly price information for various commodities is disseminated through web-to-phone service whereby short-message-service (sms) is sent to various users who have registered their mobile numbers with Infotrade. This is the ‘push’ format of sms and Infotrade also offers the ‘pull’ format whereby users can request for price information. Infotrade has secured a license from the telecom authority to use the number 8555 for a fee for this purpose. Users can text this number requesting market price information for a particular commodity and receive the required information for a fee.

Besides these two main avenues of information dissemination, Infotrade uses radio channels, village notice boards, and other avenues, in partnership with various organizations. This is done upon request by interested organizations, whereby Infotrade offers price information and partner organizations take up the role of disseminating information.

Market Information Service: The Impact

Farmers, traders and other stakeholders in Ugandan agriculture benefit from agricultural commodity price information in many ways. For starters, knowledge of market prices allows farmers to make decision on where to sell their produce. Of course, often an individual farmer may not have the scale, bargaining power or resources to move his produce from the local market to a distant market where the prices are higher. However, where farmers are involved in collective marketing, this information is useful to realize higher prices. In fact, during my time here, I met a few NGOs who work with farmer associations and help them in collective marketing. Secondly, market information helps farmers plan what to grow season after season. One of the NGOs I met was working with farmers to help them do a cost-benefit analysis in deciding what to grow. Market price is a critical input in such analysis. Recently, a group of farmers also visited FIT Uganda Ltd. (Infotrade) office wanting to know price information. As I interacted, I learnt that price information is useful to make decisions such as what to grow, how much to grow, where to sell, at what price to sell and other similar choices.

Traders also use the market information to make decisions on where to procure their produce from and at what price. In the market place, farmers are not the only group who suffer from information asymmetry; in fact, many traders too suffer from a lack of good information on prevailing market prices.

Besides directly helping farmers, market information also benefits agricultural research and policy-making. Researchers and policy-makers regularly seek market price information from Infotrade. However, the nature of information sought by them is different. While farmers look for dynamic and immediate (or prices a couple of seasons ago) market prices, researchers and policy-makers want long time-series information for meaningful analyses. Infotrade started collecting market price information in 2008 and offers the best market price information on Ugandan agricultural commodities.

Market price information is also beneficial for consumers and other development organizations. I recently learnt about one such use. An international NGO which distributes food vouchers to vulnerable groups approached Infotrade with an interest in market information to help determine the right price that should be charged by traders for supplying food against the vouchers issued by the NGO.

In the last month I have spent with Infotrade, I have learnt a good deal about the market price information service and its benefits. Clearly, there are many benefits of capturing and disseminating this information and I have outlined the more obvious ones above. Despite these benefits, you might wonder why is it that this MIS (Infotrade) suffers from challenges of financial sustainability (as outlined in my previous post). This takes me the next issue – the challenges (costs and revenues) of running a market information system, which I will address in my next post.

During my stint with FIT Uganda, I will be exploring the challenges of and strategies in offering a socially beneficial market-based solution in the specific context of FIT Uganda’s Infotrade service. My work will primarily concentrate on Infotrade, a market information system wherein details of prices, quantity demanded, seasonal patterns, and quality and standards, of around forty-five agricultural products are collected and analyzed from over forty local markets across Uganda. This information is disseminated to the target groups through radio, internet, mobile phones, village and village notice boards, among others. Through Infotrade, FIT seeks to aid farmers and other actors in the value chain with valuable information which improves their ability to manage prevailing situations and plan for the future market opportunities.

Like other developing countries, Uganda too faces challenges such as poverty, growing population, food insecurity and widespread inequality. By empowering the farming community who form the bulk of the population and aiding increased agricultural productivity, FIT is helping in tackling some of the above national problems.

Despite its success within a short span of time, FIT faces several challenges in its operations and long-term sustainability of Infotrade. Besides the operational challenges such as data collection and efficient delivery mechanism, the public good features of Infotrade limits the uptake by farmers constraining its sustainability.

I aim to understand how FIT has addressed (and is addressing) the challenges of making the program operationally and financially sustainable in the Ugandan context. At the end of my stint with FIT and this study, I hope to create a strategy to scale up Infotrade and incentivise farmers to adopt this service in order to make Infotrade sustainable. The ultimate objective of this study is to provide some lessons for similar efforts aimed at providing market and business solutions to achieve social goals in other developing countries.

This opportunity has been made possible through partial funding from Fletcher School’s Office of Career Services and Tufts University’s Institute for Global Leadership, specifically, the Empower Program for Social Entrepreneurship.

PS

I landed in Kampala on 15 May 2011 and started my stint with FIT Uganda on Monday, 16 May 2011. Staying close to Makerere University, I am living in the midst of many young Ugandans. Despite the apparent chaos, Kampala is a pleasant city with nice weather and nicer people. I have received a warm welcome at FIT Uganda and I am excited about my responsibilities for this summer.

Such a deduction should be the final piece of evidence that we need to show that the army and intelligence agencies do not serve the purpose that they are mandated with: to secure Pakistanis’ safety.

My hope is that ordinary Pakistanis start talking about just this, so that the civilian government has the support to bring these institutions under its control and purge them of officers with allegiances to terrorists.

Like any other country, Pakistan’s Fletcher exports have done pretty well. They include:

- Mian Zaheen, a Fletcher Overseer and partner at Lazard (the investment bank) in London, and a founder of the MIB programme

- Shahryar Khan, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, who served as ambassador to Jordan, the UK and France and has authored The Begums of Bhopal, The Shallow Graves of Rwanda, Cricket – a Bridge of Peace and Memoirs of a Rebel Princess (a book about his mother). He has served as the UN’s Special Representative to Rwanda and as Chairman of Pakistan’s Cricket Board and currently teaches “Foreign Relations” at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS, where Ayesha Jalal goes to sometimes, and from where four current Fletcher students have graduated). He is also a Ju Jitsu Sensei.

- Rafeeuddin Ahmed, who has served at the UN as Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs, Trusteeship and Decolonization; Secretary of the Economic and Social Council; Under-Secretary-General and Senior Adviser to the Administrator of UNDP; Under-Secretary General and Chef de Cabinet for the Secretary General; Under-Secretary-General and Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs in South-East Asia.

Amongst his political affairs posts, he served as Special Envoy of the Secretary-General to Secure the Release of the Crew of the Russian Place Forced Landed in Kandahar by the Taliban Regime, as the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the Laos-Thailand Conflict, for East Timor, for Cambodia, for Myanmar, the Convener of the Secretary-General’s Task Force on the Falkland Islands and also as Principal Aide to the Secretary-General for the Iran Hostage Crisis. Pretty bad-ass, no?

- Musa Javed Chohan, who has served as Pakistan’s ambassador to France, Canada, Malaysia, Canada and UNESCO

- Ahmad Kamal, who served as Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN, and who held posts that included Vice President of the General Assembly and President of the Economic and Social Council.

Wikipedia tells me that he was apparently Pakistan’s chief negotiator in the Uruguay Round negotiations which led to the establishment of the World Trade Organisation and continues to be a Senior Fellow of the UN Institute of Training and Research, and is the Founding President and CEO of The Ambassador’s Club at the UN.

- Tariq Mir, who served as Pakistan’s ambassador to Sri Lanka, Iraq and Iran.

- Najmuddin Shaikh, who served as Foreign Secretary of Pakistan following Shahryar Khan, and served as Pakistan’s ambassador to Canada, West Germany, the USA and to Iran. He also served as Pakistan’s special envoy to Yemen, Sudan, Kenya and Bahrain and currently writes regular columns for Pakistan’s The Express Tribune.

I had a fellow South Asian friend whose opinion it was that not much came out of Pakistan musically. To disabuse him, I created this playlist, which I now share with you:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4D0E4FDEEB9628AE

I have to preface this survey of Pakistani music by saying that I am not a music aficionado and that it is limited by my ignorance. Most of the artists are friends or are separated by one degree.

1-3) Songs 1-3 are by my friends in the band Laal. Song 1 uses the poetry of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a revolutionary communist poet who, in 1962, became the first Asian Lenin Peace Prize winner outside the USSR.

The title of the first song, Umeed-e-sahar, means ‘hope of a new dawn’. The title of the second song, translates as ‘Rise, my world, wake up the poor!’, and was scripted by Muhammad Iqbal, Pakistan’s perennial poet laureate. His vision for a state for the Muslims of British India is attributed as the inspiration for the creation of Pakistan.

The third song’s lyrics is a snarky poem whose title translates as “I told him this” by the poet Habib Jalib, whose poetry played an important part in the first Women’s Action Forum’s protests against General Zia ul Haq’s Islamist laws in 1983. (I have written about this here: http://www.imadahmed.com/568368862/long-days-journey/)

The band’s name ‘Laal’ means red. Last I hung out with him, the spokesperson for the band, Taimur Rahman was the vice chairperson of the Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party for the Punjab and I think he’s back at LUMS as a lecturer. He recently completed his PhD from SOAS. The other lead singer, Shahram Azhar, is pursuing his PhD in Econ here at UMass Amherst.

4) Paimona, by Zeb and Haniya, two Pashto girls in Lahore, singing about love.

5) Hum kis gali ‘Which lane should we go down?’ by Atif Aslam, a well known pop star across the Subcontinent.

6) Sajania by Ali Zafar, another well known pop star.

7) My friend Hassan Mohyeddin’s band Overload, a band of drums. The band includes Pappu Saeein, who entertains crowds late on Thursday nights at the Sufi shrine of Shah Jamel in Lahore. Hassan’s mother is Pakistan’s premier kathak dancer, Nahid Siddiqui.

8) Hum dekhenge – “We shall see”, another poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz sung by the late ghazal singer Iqbal Bano. The song is about the inevitable comeuppance of the rulers. Though Faiz’s poetry was banned by General Zia ul Haq, she sung this song and reportedly roused a crowd of 50,000 in 1985. More recently, this song was resurrected on Pakistan’s broadcast media as the lawyer’s and media movement ousted General Musharraf from power.

9-10) Sufi qawwal singer, the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Pakistan’s answer to Luciano Pavarotti.

11) The ghazal singer Abida Parveen sings 19th century Ghalib’s poetry.

12) A tribute to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s song Mustt musst, ‘Joy, joy’.

13-14) The Kominas, “The B*stards” based here in Lexington and Concord, also crossed over with me in Lahore. They are a ‘Muslim punk band’ whose music was used as the soundtrack to the Sundance film Taqwacores The songs I’ve put up include a title not suitable for publication as well as “Sharia Law in the USA”, designed to offend (they’re punk – that’s the idea).

15) Daniyal Noorani is also a friend who currently lives here in Boston and is thinking up ways of tackling terrorism in Pakistan. This song of his, “Find Heaven” was featured on Foreign Policy

16-17) Riz Ahmed, a friend from London, is better known for his acting. Bilal will probably be screening his movie “Four Lions” next semester. Here I leave you with his songs “Post 9/11 Blues” and “Sour times” (in which you’ll see glimpses of a familiar mug).

18) Another Pashto song from the Orakzai Agency, FATA. The lyrics were by Abdul Ghani Khan, who was a poet, philosopher, politician, and spiritual Pashtoon leader. He was one of the closest friends of Gandhi and was highly popular for his non-violent political activism.

Given this, the government should consider the following measures as part of the broad framework towards resolving the Maoist problem.

Dialogue with ceasefire – To begin, the Indian government needs to bring the Maoists to the table to initiate a dialogue to understand their grievances and demands. The dialogue process is also a means to bring a truce with the Maoists to stop the violence. On its part, the government needs to suspend active offensive operations against the Maoists during the dialogue process and abjuring of violence by the Maoists must be a pre-condition for talks. Success of the dialogue process is contingent on how the government approaches the process. On the negotiation table, the government should look at the Maoists as equals and not treat this dialogue process as a negotiation between the victor and the vanquished. Such patronising attitude of the government in the past has led to the breakdown of earlier talks. It is also essential to involve all stakeholders in the process – continued success of any negotiated truce is possible only if all the key stakeholders, including various political parties are represented in the process and are on-board the negotiated agreement.

Development and governance – It is no strange coincidence that Maoist success is mostly seen in remote, underdeveloped parts of the country. Additionally, rampant corruption, poor governance and exploitation of the poor, attract people towards the Maoists. Most Maoist sympathisers and supporters are from marginalized groups such as tribals, small and landless farmers, and people from exploited lower castes. Development in remote areas in terms of employment, infrastructure, food security, education, is a sine qua non. The government needs to invest in rural connectivity, rural housing, safe drinking water supply, elementary education, primary health, nutrition, public distribution system and other such essential facilities. Importantly, the government also needs to instill better governance and protection of the rights of the marginalized groups. Special attention needs to be paid to the issue of governance as disillusionment with governmental institutions is the primary reason why most marginalized people support the Maoists and join their rank. By addressing the issue of development and governance, the government not only answers the Maoists’ demands, it also tackles those issues which provide the legitimacy to the Maoist movement and credibility to the issues raised by the Maoists.

Better training and coordination of security forces – The state of Andhra Pradesh has enjoyed success in combating the Maoist violence through better training of the security forces. The critical needs on this front include increasing recruitment and filling of vacant posts, and, better training and equipments to deal with Maoists in deep forest ranges. While better training of security forces is a necessary condition, mere improvement in the training of the forces is not sufficient to effectively combat the Maoist violence. To avoid the problem of Maoists slipping in and out from one state to another, a coordinated national strategy is essential. Such coordination is required between central and state governments and various state governments. A national strategy and nodal agency needs to be evolved for this purpose.

The above-mentioned measures are not mutually exclusive; in fact, the government needs to undertake both the short-term and long-term measures simultaneously. In conclusion, the essential first step towards tackling the Maoist problem is to recognize that the problem is not merely a law and order issue but has deep development dimensions. Therefore, solution to the Maoist problem does not lie only in greater and better security operations but in ensuring effective development projects and functioning of governmental institutions to serve the country’s marginalized and poor.

Totalitarian societies face a dilemma in attempting to modernize their ICT systems. Either they can stifle these technologies and fall further behind in an increasingly global marketplace, or they can permit these technologies at the risk of eroding their totalitarian control.  The case of socialist Cuba is particularly illustrative.  The country is transitioning its development approach to ICT from a dictatorship that hinders the development of ICT to one that recognizes the economic value of these technologies and is allowing for their development while also making major investments in control tools.  This transition merits another look at the current U.S. sanctions on Cuba to determine whether or not they further U.S. national security objectives.  Indeed, by enabling ICT development and more open communication in Cuba, the United States will be able to positively move forward civil society efforts in Cuba by lifting specific sanctions.

To give a social perspective on a technical concept, ICT is different from vertical one-to-many forms of communication in which the “one” is typically the state broadcasting its message to citizens.  ICT represents a horizontal or many-to-many communication model that, though politically neutral, has the potential to empower individuals over the regime by allowing them to communicate directly with each other.  Mobile telephony and internet access are examples of this type of communication.  Historically, Cuba lagged behind other Latin American countries in developing the infrastructure necessary for a modern telephone system.  Cuba currently has the lowest internet penetration rate in the western hemisphere and the lowest mobile phone-penetration rate in Latin America.

It must be noted that Cuban government remains the primary obstacle to fostering the free flow of information among its citizens.  The government maintains strict control of internet access and enacted a ban on mobile phones for consumer use in 2001, limiting usage to executives working for foreign companies or high communist party officials.  The ban – though lifted in 2008 – represents the Cuban government’s fears of this potentially destabilizing form of horizontal communication.  The government’s attitudes towards telephony have gradually changed, particularly as mobile phone revenues have become an important source of hard currency.  For the average Cuban citizen, mobile phones are still prohibitively expensive for regular use.  Moreover, U.S. sanctions on Cuba are the most comprehensive set of sanctions on any country in the world and severely limit U.S. investments in Cuba’s ICT infrastructure.  More specifically, the Cuba Democracy Act (CDA) of 1992 authorizes telecom facilities to provide “efficient and adequate telecommunications services between the United States and Cuba” while also specifically prohibiting “any U.S. investment in the domestic telecommunications network within Cuba.”

The Obama Administration has displayed some recognition of the rigidity of these sanctions.  On April 13, 2009, President Barack Obama issued a memorandum with directives to increase the flow of information to the Cuban people by expanding communications links between the United States and Cuba to “decrease the dependency of the Cuban people on the Castro regime.”  Abiding by these directives, in September, 2009 the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) published changes to the Cuban Assets Control Regulations that authorize, under general license, certain financial transactions necessary to expand telecommunications links with Cuba.  These include payments for the provision of telecommunications between the United States and Cuba, the provision of satellite TV services to Cuba, and entry into roaming service agreements with telecommunication service providers in Cuba.

Nonetheless, even with these eased restrictions, the CDA’s explicit prohibition of investment in the domestic telecommunications network within Cuba remains.  The market for telecommunications and satellite services in Cuba is large, yet the current sanctions regime is still too ambiguous to seriously motivate U.S. companies to invest in Cuba.  For instance, items such as mobile phones and SIM cards appear consistent with the presidential directives to increase communication links between the U.S. and Cuba, but the large-scale export of these devices may violate the CDA.

It is also striking that these regulatory changes included the creation of an export-license exception for the export of “donated consumer communications devices” including mobile phones and laptops to Cuba.  Thus, it is clear that in the U.S. government’s opinion these items do not constitute the domestic telecommunications infrastructure of Cuba.  However, the regulatory agencies chose not to issue a license exception for the commercial export of these same devices by U.S. companies.  U.S. government agencies including the Treasury Department and the Department of Commerce must review the term “domestic telecommunications network” within the CDA to ensure that these regulations do not hinder the Cuban people from communicating freely.  The U.S. government can also redefine the term “efficient and adequate telecommunications services” within the CDA to include access to modern ICT, including satellite, mobile communications, and internet.

Finally, it is noteworthy that the U.S. sanctions regime explicitly focuses on developing communication links between the U.S. and Cuba, but not horizontal communications between Cuban citizens.  The growth of civil society within Cuba must occur on this horizontal level in order to decrease dependency on the Castro regime.  Thus there is a need to review the current regulatory framework governing U.S. sanctions on Cuba to identify more ways to facilitate horizontal communications between Cuban citizens.

There is no doubt that U.S. investments could bring hard currency to the Castro regime, which owns all telecommunications infrastructure within Cuba.  Yet closed societies thrive by denying citizens access to open communications. Even moderate access to communication tools can empower citizens, as the protests following the 2009 Iranian presidential elections demonstrate.  It is ironic that, given new horizontal forms of ICT, removing some of the specific sanctions on Cuba could actually facilitate its democratization.  Rather than strangling the Castro regime and the Cuban people, allowing them access to new technology could actually enhance U.S. strategic interests.  In sum, the U.S. government must rethink the current sanctions on Cuba to ensure that they do not fall short in giving Cubans the tools they need for open communication.

I have a penchant for telling the success stories of others, but friends, my mum, my dad and my nano, will ask me, “What about you?” I can imagine them saying, “What has The Fletcher School done for you?” Besides making new friends, quite a bit.

Having worked as a political campaigner, development practitioner and as a journalist, it has become my belief that business and the rule of law (which is hindered by foreign aid directed at governments) are the founding pillars for development. It is for this reason that I’ve taken the opportunity to delve as deeply and broadly into the various aspects of emerging market private equity that Fletcher has afforded me.

Having built solid foundations in accounting, corporate finance, strategy and marketing, negotiations and advanced Excel, I then learnt about the management buyouts, mergers and acquisitions and venture capital industries on my semester exchange at HEC Paris, and, through both finance and law classes, as well as a project for the US government agency OPIC, have learnt how to mitigate against foreign currency exchange risk, inconvertibility risk, and the risks of expropriation and civic strife. I have learnt about the legal parameters for fund-raising within the USA, and my macroeconomics and equities classes have equipped me to identify and explain broad investing themes.

Before I’ve even graduated, I’ve linked the fund with which I began work in the summer (between my first and second years) with an institutional investor from my alumni community, I’ve assessed incoming proposals (and originated one, again, from my Fletcher alumni community), have built models for the fund, streamlined the fund’s quarterly reporting pack for investors and scripted and produced it a corporate video.

I’ve also dabbled in policy recommendations through opinion editorials on the topics of political risk mitigation, sovereign ratings, Islamic finance and financial regulation, which were published in The Guardian, The Boston Globe and republished on the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s websites. I’ve interviewed with a radioshow on flood relief, and have spoken and moderated at a conference on market solutions to disaster relief held at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

My professors have been personable, accessible and passionate about their subjects, and it is to them that I owe my enthusiasm for their subjects. It helps that they come with formidable backgrounds, not only educationally, but experience-wise. They have included a former CFO of IBM and CEO of Xerox, a founder of Saturn Corporation, chairs of funds and the President of the International Arbitration Tribunal.

What has Fletcher done for me? It’s helped prepare me for for an all-round career in emerging market private equity.