CAMBRIDGE, MA – Among the senior fellows being welcomed this fall to the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government (M-RCBG) at Harvard Kennedy School are a former president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, a former head of the Budget Department at the Ministry of Finance in Israel, an innovation expert from South Africa focusing on the Fourth Industrial Revolution in Africa, an expert on the environment from the IMF, a lawyer with deep experience in infrastructure and public-private partnerships, an expert in smart regulation from the European Commission, a seasoned health care executive studying new approaches to improving health care markets, and an expert in China-Europe relations from the Brookings Institution.
“Senior fellows are a vital resource to our center. They bring valuable experience as practitioners, and their strong academic orientation enables them to provide significant insights. Their work here enriches our understanding of the business-government relationship,” said Richard Zeckhauser, Frank Plumpton Ramsey Professor of Political Economy and chair of M-RCBG’s fellows selection committee. “We welcome these new colleagues, and look forward to their effective interaction with our faculty, our students, and others engaged with the work of the center,” said John Haigh, M-RCBG Co-Director and HKS Executive Dean.
The Senior Fellows Program is designed to strengthen the connection between theory and practice as the center examines and develops policies at the intersection of business and government. Every senior fellow is sponsored by a Harvard faculty member. During their time at M-RCBG, they undertake a substantial research project and offer a study group for students.
Incoming fellows:
Rabah Arezki is Chief of the Commodities and Environment Unit in the IMF Research Department and is also a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution and an external research associate at the University of Oxford. He received his M.S. in statistics and economics from the Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l’Administration Economique in Paris and Ph.D. in economics from European University Institute, Florence. He has written on energy, commodities, international macroeconomics, and development economics. He has published widely in academic journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Economic Journal, the Journal of International Economics, the Journal of Development Economics, the European Economic Review, Economic Policy, the Journal of International Money and Finance, the World Bank Economic Review, and the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. He is the Editor of the IMF Research Bulletin and an Associate Editor of the Revue d'économie du développement. He has co-edited special issues of academic journals including of the Journal of Money Credit and Banking, the Journal of International Money and Finance, and Oxford Economics Papers. He is the co-author, and co-editor of several books including Beyond the Curse: Policies to Harness the Power of Natural Resources, Commodity Price Volatility and Inclusive Growth in Low-Income Countries, Shifting Commodities Markets in a Globalized World, and Energy Transition and the Post-COP21 Agenda. Many of his research papers have been cited extensively in academic circles and in prominent media outlets such as the Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Project Syndicate, and the Washington Post. His blog posts including on the recent oil price collapse and its global economic consequences have been viewed over hundred thousand times and have been listed as the most read IMF blog posts three years in a row. He is also a frequent contributor to Finance and Development magazine and VoxEU. As a Senior Fellow, his research is entitled The Economics of Sustainability: Causes and Consequences of Energy Market Transformation. His faculty sponsor is William Hogan, Raymond Plank Professor of Global Energy Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Email Rabah Arezki.
Phillip C. Gildan, a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, is a principal shareholder in the international law firm of Greenberg Traurig, LLP. He has extensive experience in public infrastructure development, financing, public/private partnerships (P3s), municipalization and privatization of public infrastructure, utility mergers and acquisitions, and counseling a variety of government and private infrastructure industry participants. Phillip’s experience focuses on public proprietary infrastructure businesses, covering the full range of revenue producing public assets, including water, wastewater, stormwater, reclaimed water, electric, natural gas, and solid waste utilities. He represented the East Central Regional Wastewater Facilities Operation Board in 2014 in one of the first Green Bonds offerings in the Southeast United States, under the sustainable waste management, energy efficiency, and renewable energy categories of the Green Bond Principles. He has worked with the State of Alaska as P3 and finance counsel over the last 10 years on the development of a North Slope project to bring natural gas from the prolific oil and gas reservoirs in Prudhoe Bay and Point Thompson, negotiating joint venture agreements with the major international oil and gas producers. He has also counseled the City of Portland, Oregon in its bid to acquire Portland Gas & Electric from the Enron bankruptcy, the City of Philadelphia in its analysis of privatizing Philadelphia Gas Works, the City of Austin in its analysis of divesting ownership in a coal-fired electric generation facility and acquiring gas-fired generation facilities. He has worked with county and city governments and private utility providers in the municipalization of over 75 water, wastewater and natural gas utility systems, and over 45 public infrastructure projects using various forms of P3s and privatizations. As a Senior Fellow at M-RCBG working with faculty sponsor Henry Lee, Jassim M. Jaidah Family Director of the Environment and Natural Resources Program within the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Faculty Co-Chair of the Sustainability Science Program, and a Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, Phillip will explore optimal structuring and financing of successful public infrastructure projects and a delivery structure decision matrix, including appropriate use of P3s. As a Senior Fellow, his research is entitled Addressing Federal Funding Program for Public Private Partnership Delivery of Public Infrastructure. His faculty sponsor is Henry Lee, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Email Phillip Gildan.
Elizabeth Golberg recently retired from her post as Director of Smart Regulation, responsible for regulatory policy development and its coordination and application in the European Commission. Since 2005, she has been closely involved in setting up the European Commission’s ‘Better Regulation’ system, overseeing and coordinating the preparation and quality control of impact assessments, evaluations and stakeholder consultations. The application of EU law was an important component of her regulatory policy work and she developed and oversaw the introduction of important changes European Commission approach to enforcement. participated actively in international regulatory cooperation initiatives, as a member of the Bureau of the OECD Regulatory Policy Committee as well as in bilateral discussions, including those conducted in the context of the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations. Her interest in broad issues of regulatory policy followed her practical experience in environmental policy development as Assistant to the Director General and Head of Unit for Strategic Planning and Evaluation of the European Commission’s Environment Directorate General from 2002-2005. In addition to regulatory policy, Elizabeth has long experience in external relations and assistance programme coordination and management. She was Head of Unit for external institutional relations and G7/G20 in the European Commission’s Secretariat General, developing working relations with and acting as the main coordination point for the European External Action Service. She held various advisory posts in the external relations field in the European Commission from 1993 to 2002, focusing on the accession process of the Eastern European Member States and policy development and assistance programming in the EU’s near neighbourhood. Elizabeth was actively engaged in the pre-accession preparations of Slovakia and was coordinator for the European Union’s technical assistance programme (the Phare Programme) in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Elizabeth started her career in the Canadian Department of External Affairs and International Trade in 1980, serving in posts in Bonn and Brussels. Ms. Golberg has a Bachelor of Arts and Science from the University of Lethbridge, Canada and a Graduate Diploma in International Economics from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, University of Geneva, Switzerland. She has participated in executive courses at Oxford Said Business School and at the Salzburg Seminar. As a Senior Fellow, her research is entitled Better Regulation in the European Union — Boon or Boondoggle? Her faculty sponsor is Joseph Aldy, Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Email Elizabeth Goldberg.
Deborah Gordon is a seasoned health care executive and a thought leader in health care consumerism. She currently advises entrepreneurial ventures and other companies on consumer strategies, engagement, and marketing in health care. Deb was formerly CEO of Voxent, a national technology firm supporting reproductive health providers with custom electronic health record and analytics tools and a national data warehouse. Deb had previously held health insurance leadership roles, notably as Chief Marketing and External Affairs Officer at Network Health, a Massachusetts health plan now part of Tufts Health Plan and ranked NCQA’s #1 Medicaid plan nationally. Under Deb’s leadership, Network Health received hundreds of awards, including Health Leaders Magazine’s Top Leadership Team award. She helped the plan double its membership under Massachusetts health reform, expand product assortment, and transition to the ACA. Deb was recognized as a 2011 Boston Business Journal “40 Under 40” honoree, an award highlighting Boston’s most influential business and civic leaders. In 2013, Deb was named an Eisenhower Fellow, a non-partisan program chaired by retired General Colin Powell that fosters the exchange of information, ideas, and perspectives among global leaders. On her fellowship, Deb traveled to Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore to explore the role of consumers in high-performing health systems. She has served on Harvard University’s Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility, as a Board member in MIT’s Delta V start-up accelerator, and as a mentor in Boston University’s Business Health Sector program. She has served on the Editorial Advisory Board for Fierce Health Payer and as Fierce Healthcare’s Innovation Awards’ head judge, and on Marketing Health Services’ Editorial Board, the Advisory Group for Massachusetts’ Choosing Wisely campaign, and several nonprofit Boards. Deb earned a B.A. in Bioethics from Brown University and an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School. As a Senior Fellow, Deb will research health care shopping and how to improve functioning of consumer markets in health care. As a Senior Fellow, her research is entitled Beyond Health Care Transparency: Applying Marketing Principles to Improve the Functioning of Consumer Health Care Markets. Her faculty sponsor is Joseph Newhouse, John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy and Management at Harvard Kennedy School. Email Deborah Gordon.
Philippe Le Corre has a joint appointment as a Senior Fellow with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. From 2014 to 2017, he was a Visiting Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at The Brookings Institution in Washington DC, specializing on China-Europe relations and China’s global rise. His career spans government, academia, media and business. He was Special Assistant for international affairs to the French defense minister, and also served as a Senior Policy Adviser on Asia within the Ministry of defense’s directorate for international relations and strategy. In the private sector, Mr. Le Corre worked as a partner with Publicis Consultants in Paris and Shanghai, where he ran a team of advisers to the Shanghai World Expo 2010 Organizing Committee. He previously worked in Asia as a foreign correspondent for nine years, and has published extensively on the region in The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The South China Morning Post, The Straits Times, Politico, Le Monde, Les Echos and Foreign Affairs among others. He is the author or co-author of several books including China’s Offensive in Europe (Brookings Institution Press, 2016), Quand la Chine va au marché (Maxima, 1999) and Après Hong Kong(Autrement, 1997). He published several papers on China including China’s rise: What about a transatlantic dialog? (Asia-Europe Journal, April 2017, co-authored with Jonathan Pollack) and China Abroad: The Long March to Europe (China Economic Quarterly, June 2016). Le Corre received his MA in political science from the Sorbonne in Paris and was a Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard and a Sachs Scholar in 2003-2004. Mr. Le Corre will look at the perceptions of China’s geoeconomic and geopolitical expansion, especially in Europe and Central Asia. His faculty sponsor is Professor Anthony Saich. Email Philippe Le Corre.
Amir Levi: As head of the Budgets Department at the Ministry of Finance, Amir Levi manages the state budget through Government and Knesset plenum, setting fiscal policy targets, the budget framework, deficit target and economic reform programs. He is responsible for structural priorities such as increasing competition and addressing the cost of living, integrating Israeli Arabs and the Ultra-Orthodox community into the economy, increasing productivity and innovation, developing transportation infrastructure and systems, gas and water, public health and the security budget. In this capacity, he was the lead architect of Government Resolution 922, the ground-breaking five-year economic development plan for Arab citizens, and continues to see its budget allocation and implementation. Amir Levi has been serving as the Director of the Budgets Department since 2013, after having served in a number of key positions at the Ministry of Finance between 1996-2006, including Deputy Budget Supervisor, Communication and Tourism Coordinator, and Industry Referant responsible for the budget of the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Between the years 2006 and 2013, Mr. Levi was the CEO of Shikun & Binui Renewable Energy, a company that initiates, constructs and operates power stations, especially Solar, in Israel and abroad. He has been lecturing on macroeconomic policy issues at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 2015. Mr. Levi has served on the board of directors of several government corporations, as well as on the boards of the England-Israel and Singapore-Israel Industrial Research & Development Foundations. He holds a BA in Economics and Political Science, and an MA in Economics, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As a Senior Fellow, his research is entitled How Israel can promote minorities and address growing inequality. His faculty sponsor is Tarek Masoud, Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations at Harvard Kennedy School. Email Amir Levi.
Dennis Lockhart’s career includes time in the private sector, academia, and government. He recently stepped down from the position of president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. In this role, Lockhart was responsible for all the Bank’s activities including monetary policy, bank supervision and regulation, and payment services. In addition, he served on the Federal Reserve’s chief monetary policy body, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Within the Federal Reserve System, he chaired the Conference of Presidents for his final two years and earlier chaired the Information Technology Oversight Committee. Before becoming a central banker, Lockhart was a member of the faculty of Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service where he chaired the masters program’s concentrations in global commerce and finance and international business–government relations. He taught courses focused on global business strategy, international finance and investment, project finance, and business-government relations. He also was an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Simultaneously, he was chairman of the Small Enterprise Assistance Funds, a sponsor of emerging markets venture capital/private equity funds. Earlier he was managing partner of a boutique private investment firm with activity in Africa and Latin America and president of Heller International Group, a financial firm with activities in commercial finance and merchant banking in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. In 2000, he chaired the Advisory Committee of the U.S. Export-Import Bank. At the start of his career, Lockhart held various positions, both international and domestic, with Citicorp/Citibank (now Citigroup). He worked in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Greece, Iran, Latin America and the southeast United States. He was Citicorp’s senior corporate officer and head of corporate banking for the southeast domiciled in Atlanta. Lockhart was born and grew up in California. He was educated at Stanford University and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He also attended the Senior Executive Program at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. As a Senior Fellow, his research is entitled Renewing America’s Infrastructure: a comprehensive examination of options and implications. His faculty sponsor is Tony Gomez-Ibanez, Derek C. Bok Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Email Dennis Lockhart.
Euvin Naidoo: Selected by Forbes.com in 2011 as one of the African continent's Top 10 most ‘Powerful and Influential Men’ of his generation, Euvin Naidoo's focus is on innovation within financial services and the future of banking and insurance. Euvin has been engaged as an executive within financial services and management consulting in both the USA and Africa for the past 15 years. He joined the Boston Consulting Group in February 2016 as the first South African Partner and Managing Director based out of the Johannesburg office, leading the Financial Institutions and Public Sector practices across Africa. His work focuses on digital innovation and organizational leadership and transformation within banking, insurance and the public sector incorporating the themes of agility, customer centricity, automation, robotics and the implications of the 'Fourth Industrial Revolution' on organizations. Selected in 2009 as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum (WEF), in 2012 he was recruited to the Forum’s Global Agenda Councils, where served 2 terms on the United States Council. A graduate of the Harvard Business School, in 2007, Euvin delivered the opening talk at the annual TED Global conference, an event aimed at reframing the African dialogue on business, trade and investment. In 2004, Euvin was recruited from McKinsey & Co., to join one of Africa's leading pan-African banks, Standard Bank, within Corporate & Investment Banking, where he focused on Acquisition Finance, initially based in Johannesburg and then, from 2005, in the New York office. As a New York based investment banker focused on emerging market companies, Euvin worked through an invaluable global learning curve, witnessing the ripple effect of the US financial crisis in 2007 and the risk, credit, organizational and leadership lessons this has for both developed and emerging market companies and regulators. He returned to South Africa from the USA in 2009 to head up the Risk Appetite & Credit Portfolio Management team for Standard Bank, covering a 17 country pan-African footprint across all personal and business banking product lines. In 2013, Euvin joined Barclays Africa Regional Management EXCO as the Head of Strategy, leading the development of the bank's strategy focused on execution for the 'Rest of Africa' across an 11 country pan-African portfolio. Named by Columbia University’s Journal of International Affairs as one of the ‘Five Faces of African Innovation and Entrepreneurship’, Euvin currently serves as a member of the World Economic Forum's Expert Network. As a Senior Fellow, his research is entitled The impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) on Africa. His faculty sponsor is Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development at Harvard Kennedy School.
The above eight individuals join returning senior fellows Todd H. Baker, Brian Deese, Christopher Smart, Thomas Healey and Anthony Weiss. Read their bios, and find additional information about the program.