CID Speaker Series
Throughout the academic year, CID hosts the flagship CID Speaker Series, where academics and practitioners representing a wide range of international development perspectives speak on current development issues, their organization’s recent work, and/or their own work experience. The talk is followed by a Q&A session with the audience predominantly composed of Harvard students, although all are welcome.
Road to GEM Series
During the spring semester, many Speaker Series events focus on the theme of the annual (GEM), CID's annual conference that identifies major issues and ideas that could revolutionize development paradigms.
Note: We plan to hold both in-person, hybrid, and virtual-only events. Our in-person events at the Harvard Kennedy School are open to Harvard ID holders only. Recordings of each event will be made public on channel.
| Date | Speaker | Talk Title |
|---|---|---|
January 31, 2025
|
Dr. Chinasa T. Okolo, Fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation within the Governance Studies program at The Brookings Institution |  Broadening Perspectives on AI and Data Governance in Africa |
| February 14, 2025 | Professor Gulsanna Mamediieva, Former Director General at the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine |  Digital Government at War |
| February 21, 2025 | Dr. Barham A. Salih, The 8th President of the Republic of Iraq and Senior Fellow with the Middle East Initiative at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs |  Iraq's Post-Conflict Transition: Challenges and Pathways to Economic Development |
| February 28, 2025 | Lia Tadesse Gebremedhin, Former Ethiopian Minister of Health and Executive Director of the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program |  Public Health Programs and Development Assistance |
| March 7, 2025 | Augusto Lopez-Claros, Executive Director of the Global Governance Forum |  Equality for Women = Prosperity for All A Critical Time for Women to Lead |
| April 11, 2025 | Ines Camilloni, Professor at the Department of Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires and Senior Researcher of CIMA |  Innovative Dialogues on Climate Action: GEM Incubation Fund |
| Date | Speaker | Talk Title |
|---|---|---|
September 13, 2024
|
Claudia López Hernández, Former Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia and Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow at vlog |  Urban Regional Governance for Sustainable Development |
| September 20, 2024 | Dr. Vera Songwe, Chair and Founder of the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility, Advisor to the Bank of International Settlements, and Senior Fellow at the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution Gayle Smith, Former CEO of the ONE Campaign, Coordinator for Global COVID Response and Health Security at the U.S. Department of State, and USAID Administrator |  “Rethinking the Global Economic Development Architecture?” |
| September 27, 2024 | Emiliana Vegas, Professor of Practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and CID Faculty Affiliate |  Book Talk with HGSE's Emiliana Vegas and vlog's Dan Levy |
| October 4, 2024 | Nisha Biswal, Deputy CEO of the US International Development Finance Corporation |  US Leadership in Development Finance: Leveraging Private Capital for SDGs |
| October 11, 2024 | David Yang, Director, Center for History and Economics and Professor of Economics Jie Bai, vlog Associate Professor of Public Policy Mark Wu, Director of the Fairbank Center for China Studies, and Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law Shengqiao Lin, CID and Fairbank Center Post-Doctoral Fellow |  China and the Global Economy |
| October 18, 2024 | Laurel Patterson, Director of SDG Integration at UNDP |  Acting with Precision in Complex Systems: Looking at UNDP’s SDG Push Diagnostic |
| November 1, 2024 | Gomez Agou, Senior Economist and IMF Resident Representative in Gabon |  The Politics of Failed Development: Inside IMF Look at Africa |
| November 15, 2024 | Michelle Nunn, President and CEO of CARE |
|
Humanitarian and Development Leadership in a Time of Change
| Date | Speaker | Talk Title |
| January 26, 2024 | Abby Maxman, CEO of Oxfam America | Ending Poverty and Injustice Starts with Gender Justice and Rights for Women |
| February 2, 2024 | Juan Sebastian Chamorro Garcia, Hewlett Visiting Fellow for Public Policy at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at Notre Dame | Hope Amid Horror: A Story of Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in Nicaragua |
| February 23, 2024 | Ambassador Adela Raz, Ambassador of Afghanistan to the United States from 2021-2022, the first woman to serve as Permanent Representative of Afghanistan to the United Nations, and the current Director of the Afghanistan Policy Lab at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. | Women's Empowerment in the Face of Regression and Resilience |
| March 1, 2024 | Jackson Kaguri, founder and CEO of Nyaka Inc. and 2023 Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow | Bottom-Up Approaches in International Development: The Case of Nyaka in Uganda |
| March 22, 2024 | Nancy Birdsall, founding president and current senior fellow at the Center for Global Development | Reproductive Choice and Women's Agency |
| April 5, 2024 | Patrick Achi, CID Senior Fellow and former Prime Minister of Côte d'IvoirePatrick Achi | Shrinking Africa's Infrastructure Gap |
| Date | Speaker | Talk Title |
|---|---|---|
| September 13, 2023 | Ambassador Chantale Wong, U.S. Executive Director to the Asian Development Bank | Opportunities and Challenges of MDB Development Financing in Asia |
| September 22, 2023 | Reshmaan N. Hussam, Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School | The Household at Work: Evidence from a Refugee Camp |
| October 6, 2023 | Marjorie Michel, Deputy Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister of Canada | Canada's Feminist Foreign Policy and International Development Priorities |
| October 20, 2023 | Mandeep Tiwana, Chief Programmes Officer – Evidence and Engagement at CIVICUS | The State of Civil Society and Civic Freedoms Globally |
| October 27, 2023 | Kyle Cahill, Senior Director, Environmental Sustainability Disclosure and Engagement Lead, Takeda Pharmaceuticals Sneha Shah, Senior Manager, Human Rights & Technology at Amazon | Bringing the Corporate "E" and "S" together in ESG to Advance Global Development |
| November 17, 2023 | Bintu Zahara Sakor, a Visiting Scholar at Harvard and Doctoral Researcher with the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) | A Generational Clash? Youth Demography and Political Instability in West Africa and the Sahel |
| Date | Speaker | Talk Title |
|---|---|---|
| February 3, 2023 | Mara Bolis, Mara Bolis, Advisor at Value for Women. Mara is a seasoned leader with 25 years of experience in development finance, economics, business and policy advocacy dedicated to advancing women’s equality at home and around the world. | The Dangerous Story of Women and Data: How the Development Community Fails with a "Male Unless Otherwise Indicated" Approach |
| February 10, 2023 | Joseph Asunka, PhD, CEO at Afrobarometer; 'Road to GEM23' | Climate change in Africa: Exploring citizen experiences and perspectives |
| February 17, 2023 | Ishac Diwan, Director of Research at Finance for Development, Paris School of Economics; CID Visiting Scholar | What Makes the Looming Debt Crisis for Developing Countries Different |
March 3, 2023
| Valeria Saggiomo, Lecturer in International Cooperation for Development at University of Naples; CID Visiting Scholar | Why do some development projects fail, and others succeed? The importance of “sentiment” in aid effectiveness |
| March 31, 2023 | Rolla Moumne, Right to Education Programme Specialist and Lead at UNESCO; 'Road to GEM23' | Mitigating the impacts of climate change on the right to education |
| April 7, 2023 | Ana Fernanda Hierro Barba, Technical Secretary at Consejo Nuevo León |