Moderator: Lant Pritchett

Harvard Kennedy School

Lant Pritchett is Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (as of July 1, 2007).

In addition he works as a consultant to Google.org, is a non-resident fellow of the Center for Global Development, and is a senior fellow of BREAD. He is also co-editor of the Journal of Development Economics.

He graduated from Brigham Young University in 1983 with a B.S. in Economics and in 1988 from MIT with a PhD in Economics.

After finishing at MIT Lant joined the World Bank, where he held a number of positions in the Bank's research complex between 1988 and 1998, including as an adviser to Lawrence Summers when he was Vice President 1991-1993. From 1998 to 2000 he worked in Indonesia. From 2000 to 2004 Lant was on leave from the World Bank as a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In 2004 he returned to the World Bank and moved to India where he worked until May 2007.

He has been part of the team producing many World Bank reports, including: World Development Report 1994: Infrastructure for Development, Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn't and Why (1998), Better Health Systems for India's Poor: Findings, Analysis, and Options (2003), World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for the Poor, Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reforms (2005).

In addition he has authored (alone or with one of his 22 co-authors) over 50 papers published in refereed journals, chapters in books, or as articles, as least some of which are sometimes cited. In addition to economics journals his work has appeared in specialized journals in demography, education, and health. In 2006 he published his first solo authored book Let Their People Come.

Lant, an American national, was born in Utah in 1959 and raised in Boise Idaho. Perhaps because of this, he has worked in, or traveled to, over forty countries and has lived in three other countries: Argentina (1978-80), Indonesia (1998-2000), and India (2004-2007).

Lant has been married since 1981 to Diane Tueller Pritchett and together they have three children.

Deborah Brautigam

American University

Deborah Brautigam is Associate Professor of International Development at the School of International Service, American University. She has previously held faculty appointments at Columbia University (1987-94), and Silpakorn University in Thailand (1978-79), and has been a visiting fellow at the University of Liberia in Monrovia, the University of Mauritius, Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone, and the Christian Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway. She has served as a consultant for the United Nations, the World Bank, and the U.S. Agency for International Development in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Egypt, and various sub-Saharan African countries.

Ms. Brautigam is the author of The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2009); co-editor of Taxation and State-Building in Developing Countries: Capacity and Consent (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and author of Chinese Aid and African Development: Exporting the Green Revolution (St. Martin's Press, 1998), Aid Dependence and Governance (Almquist & Wiksell, 2000); and dozens of articles and book chapters on foreign aid, the political economy of development, and the politics of economic policy. Her research has been supported by grants from the Council on Foreign Relations, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and two Fulbright research awards.

Steven Sadettin Saran

Saran Holding

Steven Sadettin Saran is the founder and the CEO of the Saran Holding, a group of companies operating in defense, energy, health, tourism, media, publishing and internet sectors in Turkey.

Mr. Saran was born in 1964 in Denver. He graduated from the University of Kentucky as a mechanical engineer in 1987 and started his career as a Technical Support Engineer for Ensco Environmental Services in Little Rock, Arkansas. After a short period of an advisory position at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Turkey, in 1989, he founded the SARAN International, a consulting company representing foreign firms in Turkey. Clients of Saran International included ESPN, Raytheon International and Lockheed Martin among others.

Between 1990 and 1995, he worked as the deputy director and the director of Martin Marietta International, a leading producer of construction aggregates, in Ankara. In 1995, Mr. Saran returned the Saran Holding as the President. Under his leadership, the group has displayed a remarkable performance and reached at 29 companies in 15 years.

His active involvement in sports started at very early ages. He attended University of Kentucky on a sports scholarship as a swimmer. He was the captain of the Turkish National Swimming Team in 1984 and 1985. In 2000, he was elected to the Board of Directors of Fenerbahce Sports Club, one of the two biggest sports clubs in Turkey with a supporter number of around 20 million, and in 2003 appointed as the Vice Chairman of the Club in charge of the soccer team.

Mr. Saran is also known with his community projects, particularly in education and athletics. As part of a national campaign in education, he has completed five of the ten schools he committed to built in Kirikkale, Turkey. Saran Holding has also been building sport complexes in the Eastern part of Turkey. Three of them will have been completed by the summer of 2010. He is the sponsor and honorary chairman of the Saran Anatolia Basketball Club for handicapped people.

An active follower of the US politics, he met both President Barack Obama and Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton during the 2008 Democratic Presidential Nomination process. He has a daughter and speaks German and Spanish as well.

Aiichiro Yamamoto

Japan International Cooperation Agency

Aiichiro Yamamoto is the Chief Representative of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in the Unites States based in Washington DC.

He graduated with a BA in English Literature from the University of Foreign Studies, Tokyo, and gained an MA in Public Administration from Columbia University, New York, New York. He joined JICA in 1979, and has filled numerous posts both in Tokyo and overseas. He worked in Dili, East Timor, on secondment to the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) as Head of the Economic Planning and Project Assessment Unit (2000-2001). More recently, he served as Resident Representative of the JICA United Kingdom Office (2001-2005), where he supported JICA’s operation in Africa, Middle-East and the Caucasus Region.

Mr. Yamamoto also worked for two and half years as Emergency Relief Operations Director of the Secretariat of the Japan Disaster Relief Team at JICA. He took up his post as Senior Assistant to Director-General of Africa Department of JICA in August 2005. His tasks included monitoring international aid trends and donor coordination on Africa as well as promoting “One Village One Product” movement, which is to promote community-based business activities and to create a pro-poor value chain for small producers in Africa.