Fall Senior Fellows Welcomed at Harvard Kennedy School's Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government

CAMBRIDGE, MA — A director of international banking for one of the top banks in Vietnam, a seasoned government relations executive, and the former General Counsel for National Grid are among the incoming fellows being welcomed this fall at the Kennedy School of Government’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government (M-RCBG).

“Fellows are a vital resource at the Center as they provide both valuable experience and a fresh lens through which to view the business government relationship,” said Roger Porter, the center’s director and the IBM Professor of Business and Government. “We welcome these scholars and officials and look forward to their interaction with our faculty, continuing fellows, researchers, students and others.”

Visiting Scholars and Fellows Programs are designed to reach outside the center to better understand how business and government engage in the creation of public value.

Incoming Senior Fellows

Luc Can is Director of International Banking, the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV), one of the top government-owned banks of Vietnam. Prior to his senior fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School, he was a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow (under a Fulbright exchange program). In 2003, Dr. Can was the only Vietnamese to have received the prestigious Australia-Asia Award for his doctorate program. He was also chairman of the Vietnamese Graduates from Australia Club (VGAC), Vice President of Melbourne Overseas Vietnamese Student Association (MOVSA), and President of Monash University Table Tennis Club. He has published a number of articles published in the Vietnam Finance and Money Review (2002), Auckland FMA Conference Proceedings (2006), China Economic Review (2008), Vikalpa (2008). Can holds an MBA (Finance) and a DBA (Banking) from Monash University, Australia. Dr. Can has received numerous achievement awards for his outstanding academic performance in his university and MBA studies, and for his management role at BIDV. During his senior fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School, he will focus on financial regulation in Vietnam.

Baris Dincer is a Senior Fulbright Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School. Before working as a Lead Consultant to the World Bank Privatization Social Support Project, he worked at the Prime Ministry Privatization Administration in Turkey as an expert dealing with restructuring and privatization projects of formerly state-run Turkish energy and telecommunications sectors. He was a member of the team responsible for the restructuring of Turkish electricity sector, UMTS Auction Commitee, and served as a board member to one of the biggest Turkish mining companies. Mr.Dincer’s research focus has been on privatization and regulatory reforms in developing countries and integration of EU energy markets. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Management from Galatasaray University, an MBA in International Management from Bilkent and Pforzheim Universities, and a post graduate diploma in Economic Regulation and Competition from City University of London. Dincer, a native speaker of Turkish, speaks French and English fluently and has working knowledge of German.

Deirdre Phillips’ research focuses on financial institutions, the degree to which they engage in civic and community endeavors, and the impact of regulation on their level of interest and involvement. A seasoned government and community relations executive, Phillips was Managing Director, Government Relations, at Putnam Investments, prior to coming to Harvard. Before that, she served in similar capacities at FleetBoston Financial and BankBoston for nearly 20 years. She is currently chief strategy officer for The Autism Consortium, a Boston-based multi-institutional collaboration that is funding research and innovation within the context of the developing life sciences arena. Phillips has a bachelor of arts in government from Wheaton College.

Joelle Schmitz’s area of expertise is the impact of government regulation on the public and private sectors; she has published and lectured on this subject in Asia, Europe, and across North America. Schmitz serves in an advisory position created by the Board of Directors at CSX, a Fortune 200 railroad with 21,000 route-miles in the United States and Canada. Schmitz holds a Masters of Public Policy from Harvard University and was educated, on fellowship, at Johns Hopkins University SAIS, the Harvard Business and Law Schools, and McGill University. Schmitz has served as a Fulbright Scholar, a policy advisor to the Canadian Prime Minister’s office, and a board member of nonprofit organizations. In her "down" time, Schmitz extreme skis to maintain her competitive ranking as a Giant Slalom ski racer.

John Sherman is a Senior Fellow with the center. He is Vice Chair of the Corporate Responsibility Committee of the International Bar Association and a member of the UN Global Compact Human Rights Working Group. He recently retired after thirty years as deputy general counsel for National Grid, one of the world’s largest utilities. Sherman was the company’s top lawyer for litigation, environmental law, and ethics in the US, and for corporate responsibility and human rights globally. He has written and spoken extensively on the emerging convergence of corporate law, business ethics, and human rights. His research at the Kennedy School will focus on the internalization of hard law and soft law into corporate values that drive a company’s human rights conduct; it will build upon the work he did on corporate human rights accountability as National Grid's representative to the Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights. Sherman is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, and lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

They join returning resident Senior Fellows, Jane Nelson and Mark Fagan, and non-resident Senior Fellows, Chip Feiss, John Foote, David Grayson, Mark Kramer, Salil Tripathi, Mario Valdivia, Holly Wise, Simon Zadek and Bryn Zeckhauser.

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