Thompson Ayodele, Nigeria
Thompson is a non-profit entrepreneur and award-winning leader in Nigerian civil society. His Lagos-based NGO, the Institute of Public Policy Analysis (IPPA), is advancing economic freedom and opportunity in Nigeria through innovative research and outreach to students, journalists and policymakers. Thompson, a journalist, holds a Diploma in Law from Kwara State Polytechnic, Ilorin and holds Bachelor of Arts from the Obafemi Awolowo University , Ile-Ife. Prior to attending Ife , Thompson worked in a private law firm. He has written several articles that have appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times, Australia Financial Review, The Comet, This Day and several other media. Thompson and the IPPA have recently been recognized for positively impacting Nigerian civil society through the prestigious Templeton Freedom Award for Institute Excellence.
John M. Balonze, USA
John has recently completed the Masters de Sciences Po at l'Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris with a specialization in international development. He has a strong interest in international relations, having graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Columbia University , and having worked for a United States Congressman and interned for numerous senators. John was formerly a Fulbright Scholar on legal reform in Turkey , and will be studying law at Regent University . Committed to child advocacy, John directed a Columbia University fundraiser for the United Nations Children's Fund and volunteered at the UNESCO Educational Resource Center in Senegal . Speaking Arabic, English, French, Spanish, and Turkish, he hopes to work in international development through improving legal institutions and the rule of law in developing countries.
Richard Chu, Canada
Richard Chu studied political science at the University of British Columbia and journalism from Kwantlen University College (2004). Two of his essays on citizenship were published in the UBC Journal of Political Studies in 1999 and 2000. Richard is a writer and editor who has contributed to a number of newspapers and magazines, and has won a number of young journalist awards and prizes. In addition to his professional work, Richard has a strong personal interest in environmental and social justice issues. Since 2002, Richard has supported and co-organized events in Greater Vancouver as a member of the Vancouver Youth Earth Charter Committee within the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai International Association of Canada (SGI Canada). With the coordinated efforts of committee members and community support, the group has increased the awareness of thousands of people in the region of the values outlined in the Earth Charter, and has worked with over 25 community organizations on various environmental initiatives. The committee's efforts were recognized by the city of Vancouver in May of 2005 when it received the Mayor's Environmental Achievement Award. The award recognizes individual and community organizations for their voluntary initiatives to protect and enhance the city's environment.
Active in the community, Richard is a local youth leader in SGI Canada – Vancouver, and a board member of the Multi-faith Action Society of British Columbia, an organization dedicated to promoting interfaith dialogue and understanding. More information is available on his website at www.richardchu.com.
Aline Meynier de Salinelles , France
Aline is a graduate in public affairs from l'Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris , where she founded l'Association Libérale , a student group based on the ideals of limited government and free trade, and where she was Editor-in-Chief of “Lib érale déchaîné,” a conservative journal. As a Tocqueville Scholar, she traveled to the United States to discover American public life and tour leading American think tanks. She attended Georgetown University as an Institute for Human Studies Fellow, and has also studied at Universität Heidelberg in Germany . Aline speaks French, German, English and Spanish.
Omagor Elijah , Uganda
Omagor finished his LLB at Makerere University , Kampala , in July 2005, and will be joining the Bar course at the Law Development Center . His major areas of research include women's economic rights, poverty, globalization, and human rights, and he has an interest in Constitutional and Administrative Law. Omagor is currently a research associate with Human Rights and Peace Education Center (HURIPEC), Makerere University , and has served as Editor for the Makerere Law Journal. He has also undertaken comprehensive leadership training under the auspices of the Compassion International Leadership Development Program.
Having been raised from an early age by a widowed mother has marked Omagor in many ways, for growing up under the care of a single mother has given him the impetus to crusade for the human rights of widows. His mother's determination and courage has had a profound effect on the person he is today. Together with his mother, he runs a small NGO, Woman of Purpose, based in Eastern Uganda . He coordinates the Hope for Widows project, a local Woman of Purpose project working to defend the rights of widows in Eastern Uganda . Through this project, Omagor has been able to realize his dream of helping widows and orphans come out of poverty caused by discriminative cultural practices. He has also been involved in youth leadership in several capacities as, well as a number of youth development projects including the International Youth Build hosted by Habitat for Humanity, Makerere University Campus Chapter. He speaks English as his official language and Ateso as his mother tongue.
Shakti Shali Ghimire , Nepal
Shakti is founder and Secretary-General of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) for the South Asia region, and is coordinator of WSIS Youth Nepal. Shakti is an international human rights and youth issues advocate, and has published several articles on human rights, political and general issues. Since 2002, he has served as publisher & web developer of nicenepal.com and idea.org.np.
As a student, Shakti was involved in forming a local level youth organization, the Green Valley Club, where he worked for over three years as president. He was also engaged in INSEC, the leading NGO for human rights and social justice in Nepal . Shakti has attended the World Social Forum in Mumbai on January 2004, the oneworld.net South Asia third regional meeting and the third International Summer Camp in the United Kingdom on July 2004. He collaborated with technical, human rights & peace professionals, as well as environmentalists to create a new youth forum based on information and communications technologies, called “Idea Action.”
Mario Ghossoub, Lebanon
Mario was born in Lebanon and his family, after a stay in Africa ( Niger ), his family returned to Lebanon , where he attended le Grand Lycée Franco-Libanais ( Mission Laïque Française ) in Achrafieh, Beirut . He obtained his French Baccalaureate ( Série Scientifique ) in 1998 with distinction and fell in love with Mathematics and Philosophy (two very closely related fields).
After his senior year in high school, he pursued studies in pure mathematics ( maths sup/spé ) at Lycée Chaptal in Paris , France . He then decided to major in statistics and actuarial mathematics and to minor in philosophy. He obtained his Bachelor degree from Notre Dame University with the highest distinction in February 2004.
In October 2004, Mario enrolled in the one-year graduate program, Cycle International d'Etudes Politiques at l'Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po-Paris). In August 2005, he matriculated to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor . As a Fulbright Scholar, Mario joined the Actuarial Mathematics Department as a graduate student. Mario speaks English, French and Arabic fluently, has knowledge of Spanish, and is currently studying Hebrew and Italian.
Daniel Griswold, USA
Daniel Griswold serves as director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies. Since joining Cato in 1997, Griswold has authored or co-authored major studies on globalization, the World Trade Organization, free trade agreements, imports and manufacturing, trade and democracy, immigration and other subjects, including the September 2004 Cato study, “The Case for CAFTA.” He co-edited the Cato book, Economic Casualties: How U.S. Foreign Policy Undermines Trade, Growth, and Liberty , published in 1999.
Griswold has been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, and other major publications and has appeared on C-SPAN, Lou Dobbs Tonight on CNN, the NewsHour on PBS, Fox News, the BBC, and numerous other TV and radio news and talk shows.
Griswold has testified on trade and immigration before the Senate Finance and Commerce committees, the House and Senate immigration subcommittees, the House Ways and Means and International Relations trade subcommittees, the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission, and the U.S. International Trade Commission.
Earlier in his career, Griswold served for 12 years as editorial page editor of the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph, a 105,000-daily-circulation newspaper in Colorado . He won first-place awards for editorial writing from the Colorado Press Association in 1995 and the Colorado Associated Press Editors and Reporters in 1993. From 1981 to 1983, he served as press secretary for former U.S. Rep. Vin Weber, R-Minnesota.
Griswold earned a Diploma in Economics and a Master of Science degree in the Politics of the World Economy at the London School of Economics in 1995-97. He earned his undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1979.
Michael Herrmann, Germany
Michael is staff of the Special Programme on Least Developed Countries of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). In this position, Michael has co-authored many of UNCTAD's Least Developed Countries Reports and conducts economic research and policy analysis on development challenges faced by the world's poorest countries. He has a broad research area, focusing on trade, investment, growth, employment, poverty and development financing. He is directly involved in several key policy initiatives, including the Millennium Development Goals, Poverty Reduction Strategies and the Doha Agenda. At present, he works on structural economic change and industrial development; previously he worked extensively on issues in international trade, including market access preferences for least developed countries and other developing countries; market access conditions in agriculture and non-agricultural goods; international commodity prices; balance-of-payments; and food security.
Michael is currently in the process of completing a PhD in international economics and development studies. He holds a MA with the same specialization from the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver , USA . Michael has also studied at the University of Tübingen , Germany . He is fluent in German, his mother tongue, and English, his main working language. He also speaks French and some Spanish.
Roman Kosodiy, Ukraine
Since 2002, Roman has been an Associate Professor of the Finance Department at the Sumy National Agrarian University (SUMY) and Senior Research Fellow at the Social and Environmental Economics Research Center of SUMY, where he investigates rural development policies, food security, and rural human resource development issues. He was formerly a postgraduate student at SUMY , where he was also an Assisting Teacher at the Finance Department, and was awarded a diploma from the Sumy Region Governor for high scientific and academic achievements in May 2005.
In partnership with the US Department of State Program on the Development of Professional Associations in Ukraine , Roman is working on the creation and development of the Sumy Regional Branch of the Ukrainian Association of Economists, which was founded in April 2005. He has also been Scientific Editor of the University Scientific Journal Herald of the Sumy National Agrarian University since January 2002, and is currently translating into Ukrainian the textbook Multinational Business Finance , 10 th ed., a project sponsored by the “International Renaissance Foundation” of the Ukrainian Soros Foundation.
Roman was formerly a Grantee of the Center for Advanced Study and Education (CASE) sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation and was based in the European Humanities University ( Minsk , Belarus ) with a research project on cross-border cooperation between Ukraine and Belarus during their social and economic transformations.
Cathy Madge, United Kingdom
Cathy has developed a strong interest in political issues since she was sixteen, and her interest has grown ever since. She won the UK Young Environmentalist of the Year Award 2002 with a project on sustainable food production. At 18, she and two other young people established the Welsh Youth Forum on Sustainable Development (WYFSD) as a way for young people in Wales to influence the government on issues of sustainable development. After leaving school, Cathy worked for Jill Evans, a Welsh Member of the European Parliament in Brussels , giving her a fascinating insight into the life of a high-level politician and an idea of how the European Union works. She attended the 2005 nrg4SD (Network of Regional Governments for Sustainable Development) Summit in Sumatera , Indonesia as a representative of the young people of Wales .
Cathy currently works for the Welsh Assembly Government in the field of international sustainable development and is studying for an Open University degree in Social Science and International Development. She recently attended the week of protests around the meeting of the G8 (Group of Eight) leaders in Scotland .
Melisande Middleton , France , USA
Melisande was an undergraduate at the Sorbonne and Stanford Universities , and is currently a graduate student in Economics of International Relations at l'Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences-Po Paris). She has worked as a journalist in the US and as a teacher in Japan . Her research focuses on applying indigenous knowledge (IK or LINKS) to local economic development, specifically in Latin America . She was awarded an Honors grant from Stanford University to carry out research in Oaxaca , Mexico in 2001, and will travel to Peru this year to research the effects of indigenous irrigation techniques on Andean agricultural communities. Melisande is fluent in English, French, and Spanish, and speaks some German. She loves writing and photography, and has published and exhibited some of her work. She worked at UNESCO in the fall of 2005, and plans to obtain a PhD in development studies.
Vanessa Musolino, Australia
Vanessa, 20, was born in Adelaide , Australia , where she currently attends the University of Adelaide . She is in her third year of study for a bachelor's degree in International Studies. Her major areas of study are international relations, comparative politics, and European and Asian history. Additionally, she is in her final year of study for a Diploma in Language (Italian).
Vanessa is involved in ‘Insight,' a student-run organization whose main aim is to promote understanding of health issues in developing communities and the multiple factors, including globalization, that affect these issues. She was recently accepted as a member of the Golden Key International Honor Society. The Adelaide University Chapter is an active player in youth and indigenous issues.
Outside of university, she is a member of the community-based environmental advocacy organization The Wilderness Society. She strongly believes in its mission: to protect, promote, and restore wilderness and natural resources across Australia for the survival and ongoing evolution of life on Earth. In the coming years, she hopes to complete her honors year in International Studies and go on to further study.
Olusegun Olowu , Nigeria
Olusegun studied economics at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. An avid writer with strong interest in issues around development and the community, he has over the years been involved with many community-based and national non-profits working within the model of youth development and the reproductive and sexual health of young people. A long-standing advocate of volunteering and youth participation in society, he has volunteer experiences in Nigeria , the United Kingdom , Spain , and Thailand . Having held leadership positions throughout his academic career, he was a Nigerian delegate to the Oxfam International Youth Parliament in Sydney , Australia in 2004 and is currently involved in the parliament as an Action Partner working with other young people towards building a peaceful, equitable, and sustainable world.
Olusegun has strong interest in issues around development, particularly poverty, public health, and youth. He is an alumnus of the National Center for Economic Management and Administration (NCEMA), Nigeria , and has been involved in project management and training activities. He has received prizes for his writing and has been a recipient of many travel scholarships and awards. He speaks English and Yoruba fluently and is currently a graduate intern with an advisory firm in Lagos , Nigeria .
Arvind Panagariya , India
Dr. Panagariya is a Professor of Economics & Jagdish Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political Economy at Columbia University . In the past, he has been the Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank and a Professor of Economics and Co-director, Center for International Economics, University of Maryland at College Park . He has also been associated with the World Bank, IMF, WTO, and UNCTAD in various capacities. He holds a PhD in Economics from Princeton University .
Professor Panagariya has written or edited more than half dozen books, including The Economics of Preferential Trade Agreements , 1996, AEI Press (with Jagdish Bhagwati), The Global Trading System and Developing Asia, 1997, Oxford University Press (with M.G. Quibria and N. Rao), and Lectures on International Trade , 1998, MIT Press (with J. Bhagwati and T.N. Srinivasan). World Scientific Press published a collection of his essays, Regionalism in Trade Policy: Essays on Preferential Trading , in 1999 .
Professor Panagariya is the founding editor of the Journal of Policy Reform , which he edited with Dani Rodrik from 1996-2001. He is currently an editor of the India Policy Forum , a journal launched jointly by the Brookings Institution, Washington DC and the National Council on Applied Economic Research, New Delhi to stimulate policy relevant research on India . He is an Associate Editor of Economics and Politics .
Professor Panagariya writes a monthly column in the Economic Times , India 's top financial daily. He has also written guest columns in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Hindu , India Today , and Outlook . He has appeared on, among other news programs, Jim Lehrer Newshour ( USA ), ABC (World View), BBC World News, CNN International, CNN (Asia), and CNBC ( Asia ).
Jocelyn Margareth Loanzon Reyes, Philippines
Jocelyn Margareth “Joyce” Loanzon Reyes finished her AB International Studies course at Miriam College Foundation, Inc. (formerly Maryknoll College ) in Quezon City , and is presently pursuing an MA in the same field at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. Joyce completed her elementary and secondary education at St. Theresa's College, also in Quezon City .
Professionally, Joyce has worked: with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on a climate change project with the Manila Observatory; on the Presidential Task Force on the Reconstruction of Iraq; and on a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) project with regard to the Establishment of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in the Philippines . Ms. Reyes has also published articles in various magazines and websites such as islamonline.net.
In college, Joyce was active in the student council and a number of organizations. She was elected president of the International Studies Society, and was named Editor-in-Chief of the departmental magazine for two consecutive years. She had also won several writing competitions. As a delegate to the Model United Nations of the Far West held in 2001 in San Francisco , California , Joyce was awarded a Grade of Excellence, and she and the rest of the Miriam delegation received the Diplomatic Achievement Award.
Shaka Robert , Uganda
Shaka studied at King's College Budo in Uganda from 1991-1996, and later matriculated to Makerere University from 1997-2000, pursuing a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biochemistry. He is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) and a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), working for Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, an international Public Health Agency, as a Network Engineer on a HIV/AIDS Program in rural Uganda since 2000.
He is an African Youth Foundation Award winner for the year 2004 for his publication, “ICT & Agriculture” and is also a World Bank Development policy Dialogue Diplomat, having participated in a number of public policy development competitions. He has also trained in Information Technology (IT) Designs at Torque IT Johannesburg in South Africa .
Shaka's thirst to question the root causes of Africa 's problems from a global perspective has its roots in his early life experiences. The break down of civil order in Uganda forced him to join the National Resistance Army during his childhood. This same civil strife which robbed him of his childhood also took his parents away from him. With such experiences behind him, Shaka hopes to be a part of a peaceful Renaissance in his country, to bring youth the opportunities that he never had.
Logan Wallace , France , USA
Logan Wallace recently earned his degree in economics from Fordham University in New York City . Prior to that, he studied international business at a university in the south of France after earning a Scientific Baccalaureate in Aix -en-Provence , his home town.
In the summer of 2004, his interest in international politics and economics took him to Cambodia , where he planned import substitutions for the development of local economies. Logan was also part of a research team dedicated to increasing awareness about the realities of sexual tourism and its economic implications. He joined the Global Youth Action Network in January 2005, and worked on the development of the Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS on the African continent. Logan is fluent in both French and English, and studied Standard Arabic during his time at Fordham . He has traveled extensively within Europe, and has also visited Turkey , Indonesia , Morocco , Thailand , and Cambodia. |
Contributing Authors
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