The Alan Cordova News Service

Where to Go in New England

2008-06-05T19:58:00.000-07:00

Here's a list I put together for a friend (with a map showing the locations relative to New York):

Mystic, Connecticut

- Mystic Seaport (http://www.mysticseaport.org): Tall ships and a recreated 19^th-century shipping village.

Newport, Rhode Island (http://www.gonewport.com)

- Newport Mansions (http://www.newportmansions.org): Mansions of wealthy families (Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, etc.). I visited several with my family when we were there (I was 11), but I only remember The Breakers.

- Newport Historical District (http://tps.cr.nps.gov/nhl/detail.cfm?ResourceId=759&ResourceType=District): Well-preserved colonial architecture

Fall River, Massachusetts

- Battleship Cove (http://www.battleshipcove.org): Collection of World War II-era battleships with a military museum.

Plymouth, Massachuetts

- Plimouth Plantation (http://www.plimoth.org): Historical reenactment of one of the first settlements in what became the United States.

- Plymouth Rock (http://www.plymrock.org): Where the Mayflower is supposed to have landed. A tourist trap for over 250 years.

Boston, Massachusetts

- Boston Common: Central Park for Boston. Visit the Public Garden (home of the famous ‘Make Way for Ducklings’ statue commemorating the children’s book of the same name) and the Lagoon (home of the Swan Boats [http://www.swanboats.com])

- Boston Children’s Museum (http://www.bostonkids.org)

- Freedom Trail: Starts at the Boston Common and visits most of the city’s famous sites (http://www.cityofboston.gov/FreedomTrail/). Guided tours are available at 148 Tremont Street near the Common at 10 AM, 11 AM, 12 PM, 1 PM, 1:30 PM, 3:30 PM and 4:30 PM (https://store.thefreedomtrail.org/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=2)

- Clam Chowder: Although you can get clam chowder anywhere in the United States, it has always found its home in Boston. CitySearch put together a listing of the best spots to get a cup: http://boston.citysearch.com/bestof/winners/2007/clam_chowder

- Museum of Science (http://www.mos.org): Excellent exhibits

- Quincy Market: Historic district downtown – a bit touristy.

Concord, MA

- Minute Man National Historic Park (http://www.nps.gov/mima/): Visit the Battle Road, where the Battle of Concord took place on April 19, 1775, and the Old North Bridge, the site of the Shot Heard ‘Round the World, as described by poet Ralph Waldo Emerson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concord_Hymn (and, as US schoolchildren will tell you, later featured in the 1970s educational film series Schoolhouse Rockhttp://www.school-house-rock.com/Shot.html) (warning - the web site plays the annoying song).

Portsmouth, NH(http://www2.preservationnation.org/dozen_distinctive_destinations/2008/Portsmouth)

- Strawberry Banke (http://www.strawberrybanke.org): Historic district featuring colonial and federal architecture

- Isles of Shoals: Small islands off the coast, viewable from scenic tour boats (http://www.islesofshoals.com/tickets/index.php?page=shop/browse&category_id=2fd1022ccc3a56c1f878cd899a22c469)

Portland, ME

- Old Port Exchange: Revitalized warehouse district featuring the 1807 Portland Observatory signal tower. Restored Victorian houses

Bar Harbor, ME

- Acadia National Park (http://www.nps.gov/acad): The most beautiful and best-preserved section of the Maine coastline.

"Financing Business in Tajikistan"

2008-04-29T12:21:00.000-07:00

A recently published post about my consulting work with the First MicroFinance Bank of Tajikistan published in Columbia Business School's blog Public Offering and on the Social Enterprise site (additional hyperlinks added):

Financing Business in Tajikistan

One of the more remote places to do business is Tajikistan, a mountainous republic in Central Asia. Recent events aren’t helping: an energy crisis appears to have set in motion a food shortage, and the IMF claims that the National Bank misrepresented its creditworthiness to secure loans.

Still, the economy is growing, and we were excited to see it firsthand over spring break. All semester we had been working with a local bank, the First MicroFinanceBank of Tajikistan (FMFB), on assessing the viability of providing commercial loans to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In mid-March Lukas Bauer ’09 and I traveled there to gather research that could help us identify the factors that would determine whether or not that could work.

After arriving in Dushanbe, the capital, we went first to the bazaar to meet with small-business owners. We found retailing practices that would usually cause great concern: bags of cash were transported hundreds of miles to pay suppliers; there was no maintenance of current accounts or accounting books; and monthly sales tracking (or any, for that matter) was conspicuously absent.

In the framework of commercial finance, these business practices would preclude an assessment of the chance of default, a necessary element to judging the risk that the bank would incur by providing a loan. However, the framework of microfinance allows lenders to protect portfolios through diversification: while a default of the size of most commercial loans could cripple the financier, the combination of multiple borrowers and the small size of individual loans protects the bank’s lending portfolio from collapse.

The next day we boarded a plane for Khorog, the capital of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO), the remote mountainous province that comprises nearly half of the country’s territory. In ninety breathtaking minutes we flew over the 20,000-plus foot Pamir range, observing the isolated villages and seasonally passable unpaved roads below (we would spend nineteen hours driving back). We were beginning to understand the complexity of the challenges faced by GBAO businesses.

Over the next three days we visited clients in the rural districts of Roshtkala and Rushan, discussing the finer points of locally significant activities such as Pamiri residential construction and chicken incubation. They pointed to real challenges facing their business, ranging from changing consumer preferences to across-the-board inflation on basic commodities.

We were awed by the lengths to which owners went to start their businesses. One dentist brought fragile equipment over steep mountain passes from China. Other aspiring industrialists drew deeply on capital loans to create outbound supply chains.

By the week’s end, we had a real sense of the needs of the customers. They called for more credit, lower interest rates, less up-front paperwork and most vociferously, longer loan durations. From the bank’s perspective, however, these requests had to be balanced with risk level, transparency and the costs such changes would pose.

Our challenge now is to resolve this disjunction. Over the next month, our team — Ossama Soliman ’08, Gervasio Guareschi ’09 and Michael Hsueh ’09, along with myself — will be researching microfinance institutions around the world that make loans in similarly inhospitable terrain.

After final exams, part of our team will travel to Dushanbe to present our recommendations and plan the next steps with the bank.

Microfinance will not be a panacea for Tajikistan; even if the FMFB succeeds in meeting its clients’ financial needs, deeply rooted economic and political problems will still limit business opportunities.

Nevertheless, the bank has already demonstrated that the provision of finance markedly improves the odds that entrepreneurial endeavors will blossom into productive and profitable enterprises. We aim to convey the insight from more mature organizations that will enable the bank to both succeed commercially and make as broad a social impact as possible.

This consulting project was organized by the International Development Club and sponsored by the Social Enterprise Program.

Third Semester Begins 9/05 at Columbia Business School

2007-08-29T12:36:00.000-07:00

This fall, I will be taking seven electives:

My primary extracurricular activities will be planning the South-East Asia Chazen Study Tour, managing a panel at the Social Enterprise Conference participating in the Hermes Society and serving as a Peer Advisor to Cluster G'09.

Summer of Finance

2007-05-12T23:03:00.000-07:00

Google has its Summer of Code, hippies their Summer of Love, baseball the Summer of '49 and George Costanza the Summer of George. With Advanced Corporate Finance, Turnaround Management and Capital Markets, the summer of 2007 will be the Summer of Finance.

Follies Videos Now Online!

2007-04-22T08:04:00.000-07:00

Check out "Watch my Stuff" and "Harry Potter," via CBS Follies.

Alan Speaking at "Forum: The Many Schools of Democracy"

2007-03-25T20:08:00.000-07:00

Forum: The Many Schools of Democracy

Monday, April 9
7:30pm
Room RH305, Gottesman Libraries, Teachers College, 120th Street

Towards the end of the 20th century, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of many Latin American dictatorships initiated a new wave of democratization in the world. Besides programs directly aimed at
developing the capacities for democratic governance of transitioning countries, many other activities undertaken by the international development community indirectly improve citizens' proficiencies for democratic participation.

At this forum we will hear our speakers' ideas and experiences concerning how these later approaches help fulfill the democratic promise.

Forum speakers:
Alan Cordova is a MBA candidate (Class of 2008) at the Columbia Business School with an interest in social enterprise and entrepreneurship (or, more specifically, getting the ball rolling in Central Asia!). He is originally from Seattle, WA, and graduated from Williams College in 2006 with a BA in Political Science and Astronomy.

Colleen McGinn is a doctoral student at the Columbia School of Social Work, specializing in disaster mental health. She is an experienced humanitarian aid worker who has managed emergency and development programs around the world, including in such trouble spots as Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and the Balkans. Prior to that, she worked for a number of years in Washington, DC on advocacy and policy issues related to human rights, humanitarian programming, and conflict resolution, including serving as Acting Asia Advocacy Director for Amnesty International. She has a BA in Political Science from Ohio University and a MS in Development Studies from Tulane. Colleen will discuss the mainstreaming of conflict resolution and democratization into development programming, particularly the "Do No Harm" framework for participation in contexts of communal conflict

Nicolas Stahelin is a MA candidate in the International Educational Development program at Teachers College, and is the service-learning coordinator for the Peace Corps Fellows Program at this institution. In this position he collaborates with NYC high-poverty public school teachers to implement curriculum-based
service projects with their students. Previously he helped coordinate service-learning initiatives and taught high school bioethics at Tandem Friends School in Charlottesville, VA. With a BA in Environmental Studies from Oberlin College (2002), Nicolas also worked for three years in the Amazon region of northern Brazil
with the School for International Training, an accredited institution that provides undergraduates with semester-long experiential study abroad programs around the world.

Alan Elected Bottom Line Correspondent!

2007-01-28T21:15:00.000-08:00

Alan elected Cluster Z's Bottom Line Correspondent. Look for his coverage of CBS goings-on appearing here on a biweekly basis.

The Alan Cordova Library!

2007-01-03T22:34:00.000-08:00

Library.AlanCordova.com, powered by LibraryThing, now online!

AlanCordova.com Restored!

2007-01-03T22:30:00.000-08:00

After the WSO Christmas 2006 Meltdown, AlanCordova.com was rendered in its pre-9/9/06 mode (oh, the horror!). Thanks to quick service by WSO technicians (see link), WSO and, thereby, AlanCordova.com, has been fully restored.

Space Policy Work Profiled

2006-12-19T10:53:00.000-08:00

Alan's work in space policy profiled in the Monterey Institute Foghorn.