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Hello EPD-ers!
We hope you all had a great first week of classes and are ready to tackle this new one!
As we strive to build this community, we would like for you to have a say in what that looks like. What are your interests? What sectors are you interested in? Are there specific employers you would like to talk to? What social events would you like to see? Please fill out this brief survey to let us know! Many thanks in advance!
This week's newsletter includes:
- Upcoming EPD and Other Events
- Career Opportunities and Internships
- Prof. Daniel Naujoks is seeking a Research Assistant
- Faculty Spotlight
- Student Spotlights
- Pick of the Week
- EPD Office Hours
Upcoming EPD and Other Events
 EPD Trivia Night w/ Faculty
Thursday, Sept. 17th | 8-9 pm | Zoom
Join your EPD PAs Saiful & Selena and your brilliant faculty members for a fun Trivia night!
RSVP on CampusGroups: http://cglink.me/r812288
Ethics and Privacy: Terms of Usage, a Data Science Day 2020
TODAY, Monday, Sept. 14th | 10:00-11:30 am | To register Click here
As part of the Data Science Institute's flagship annual event, this virtual session will bring together thought leaders who are driving discussions on ethics and privacy in data science and engineering. Ethics and Privacy: Terms of Usage will feature conversations and lightning talks on a range of topics, such as ensuring the responsible use of data, exposing algorithmic bias, and the benefits and risks of data sharing. Professor Tamar Mitts will be amongst the distinguished speakers.
Book Talk: "Meddling in the Ballot Box: The Causes and Effects of Partisan Electoral Interventions"
TODAY, Monday, Sept. 14th | 12-1:30 pm | Zoom
The Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies presents Book Talk: "Meddling in the Ballot Box: The Causes and Effects of Partisan Electoral Interventions," (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, forthcoming) by Dov H. Levin, Author and Assistant Professor, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Hong Kong. Click here to register.
OCS Recruitment Orientation for EPD Concentrators
TODAY, Monday, Sept. 14th | 1-2 pm | Zoom
The Office of Career Services (OCS) would like to make sure that you are well prepared for the internship and job search. For this reason, we are doing a Recruitment Orientation for each concentration. During this orientation, you will learn about all of the resources available for searching for jobs and internships, and how students can specifically improve their search for their particular academic tracks and interests. We urge BOTH first- and second-year students to attend this Recruitment Orientation. Click here to register.
Save the date! The Challenges of Financing the Sustainable Development Goals
Thursday, Oct. 1st. | 6-7pm | Zoom
Register here (Zoom link will be shared one day prior to the event)
Speaker: Navid Hanif, Director, Financing for Sustainable Development Office, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA)
- What will it take to achieve global solutions to financing challenges within the context of the most profound economic downturn since the Great Depression? How will megatrends, including digitalization, changing trade patterns and the effects of climate change, alter our economic trajectory?
- What policy actions can address near-term financing challenges, including the escalating debt crisis, and provide fiscal space to enable countries to invest in the COVID recovery and 2030 Agenda?
- What will a post-COVID economy look like and what role can the private sector play in ensuring a resilient and “green” recovery that is aligned with the SDGs?
- How can we ensure that the most vulnerable countries and people, which have been hardest hit by the pandemic, are not being left behind in a global recovery and the post-COVID economy?
The webinar will explore these questions with an eye on the role of the 2030 Agenda and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda as a roadmap for national and multilateral action to achieve the dual objective of advancing recovery efforts from COIVD-19 and overcome persistent challenges to the financing of the SDGs.
Career Opportunities
The Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellowship Program (http://scoville.org)
The Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellowship, established in 1987, is a highly-competitive national fellowship program that provides recent college and graduate school alumni with the opportunity to gain a Washington perspective on key issues of peace and security. Twice yearly, the fellowship’s Board of Directors selects a group of outstanding individuals to spend six to nine months in Washington. Supported by a salary, the fellows serve as full-time junior staff members at the participating organization of their choice. About 30 host organizations participate in this program including Search for Common Ground (which was a workshop client last year) and which will be recruting fellows for spring 2021.
Applications: The next application deadline is October 9, 2020 for the spring 2021 semester that will begin between January 15 and April 1, 2021. The online application form will be live by September 12, 2020. Learn more here.
World Bank Group Young Professionals Program (YPP) (focus on IFC & MIGA)
Thursday, Sept. 17th | 4-5pm | Webex
Work Authorization Requirement: N/A
For over 50 years, the Young Professionals Program has attracted some of the brightest young minds to contribute to the World Bank Group’s top priorities, from poverty eradication, social development, and climate change to the current response to the COVID-19 crisis.
If you are a highly motivated individual with a passion for international development, graduate level education, relevant professional experience, and the potential to grow into impactful leadership roles across our institutions, register today for this virtual recruitment event.
Young Professionals are recruited from around the world, with various academic and professional backgrounds relevant to the World Bank, International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA).
You can learn more about the YPP using the following links: Here and here
For more information and to register: Click here
Internship Opportunities
- U.S. House of Representative - Intern for The Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, Civilian Security, and Trade Click
- The Carnegie Middle East Center (CMEC) - Research Intern Click
- Lipis Advisors - Junior Analyst Internship Click
- KPMG - Intern Advisory State and Local Solutions Summer 2021 Click
- Jain Family Institute - Quantitative Social Science Research Fellowship Click
Prof. Daniel Naujoks is seeking a Research Assistant!
Fall 2020 - Spring 2021
Application Due Date: September 18, 2020
Professor Daniel Naujoks is looking for a research assistant for Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 to support the analysis of United Nations Development Plans. The research assistant will support Professor Naujoks to use the qualitative research software NVivo to apply automatic and manual codes; create a dataset that is supplemented by statistical data available from other sources and support the analysis. Interested students should read for more information here and apply by September 18th.
Faculty Spotlight: Nandita Krishnaswamy
 Nandita Krishnaswamy is excited to be teaching at SIPA this fall. She is teaching Economic Development for International Affairs (INAF U6602), which is one of the core development courses in the EPD curriculum. This course begins with economic theories that explain the process of development on a macro level, brings to light the gaps left by existing theories by comparing expected outcomes to empirical data, and, finally, looks at where and how public policy can effectively close these gaps. The course intersperses short lecture segments with lots of discussions and a student presentation per week, which keeps us all awake and engaged on Zoom. It also focuses on the economic intuition behind models and theories, bringing in mathematics at key points mainly to cement understanding.
In her research, Krishnaswamy studies labor market frictions in developing countries. Her previous work has shown that collective action in village labor markets to keep wages high can have large aggregate effects for labor supply. Together with co-authors, she is currently exploring how and why people value flexibility in work arrangements, and how providing that flexibility can affect workers’ earnings. She hopes this work can shed some light on a potential source of income inequality in these labor markets.
Beyond her academic interests, Krishnaswamy is an avid Carnatic violinist and tennis player.
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As a follow up to last week's faculty profile, we'd like to share with you some of Prof. Jeff Ashe's publications:
- Ashe Jeffrey, Kim Wilson, "How to Achieve the American Dream on an Immigrant's Income" | Find it on Mango Tree
- Ashe, Jeffrey "Looking Backwards to Move Forward" | Can be found on Mango Tree
- Ashe Jeffrey, Kayla Neilan. "In Their Own Hands: How Savings Groups are Revolutionizing Development." | Can be ordered on Amazon, or a copy can be requested directly from Professor Ashe (ja2144@columbia.edu).
EPD Student Spotlights
Ruby Khan
 Ruby is an entrepreneurial social finance and sustainability enthusiast. She is a dual degree MPA EPD – QMSS candidate.
After her mother received philanthropic funding for her business, it enabled her family to rise out of poverty. Her single mother's transformative entrepreneurial journey inspired Ruby's passion for understanding social finance and impact investing.
Born and raised in Mumbai, India, Ruby pursued higher education in Boston. During her undergraduate years, she co-founded one of the first impact investing initiatives based in an undergraduate US institution. After completing a BSBA in Finance and Entrepreneurship, she went onto work at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and in development finance in India. She came to SIPA to learn more about finance from an economic development lens.
At SIPA, she served on the Boards of Spectrum and SSOC (SIPA Students of Color). Furthermore, she serves as a Socially Responsible Investing Advisor to Columbia University's endowment on topics about thermal coal and private prison operators. She recently also completed her Summer Associateship at The Global Impact Investing Network.
Ruby is a first-generation high-school and college graduate in her family, and is happy to talk to any other first-generation students about their opportunities and challenges at SIPA!
When she's not studying or consuming an unhealthy amount of news, Ruby is scrolling through an unhealthy amount of memes
Reid Fennerty
 Reid Fennerty is a first-year MIA student concentrating in EPD and specializing in DAQA and East Asia.
Reid majored in economics and Chinese language and affairs at College of William & Mary and spent a semester at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He was also a research assistant for a sustainable development research project based in Nicaragua. Reid's recent professional experiences include an internship at the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service in Colombia, working on a project to expand U.S. investor interest in Bogota-Cundinamarca and Cartagena. As a summer analyst at an international sales group in the D.C. area, he worked on supplier research and acquisition for raw materials for infrastructure projects in the MENA region. He also served in the U.S. Peace Corps in China, as an education volunteer at the Lanzhou University of Finance & Economics.
His interests include economic diplomacy, trade & development policy, microfinance, social inclusion, and impact investing, with a particular regional interest in the Asia-Pacific. Originally from the Washington D.C. area, Reid grew up internationally as a part of a Foreign Service family. His favorite place he has lived is Buenos Aires. In NYC, you can find him going for his daily run in central park, grabbing food in Chinatown, or exploring the downtown neighborhoods. He also loves watching movies, reading, listening to a true-crime podcast, or slowly teaching himself how to cook!
Don't hesitate to send us your profile to be featured in our next newsletter!
Pick of the Week!
This week's movie: I am Not Your Negro
 I Am Not Your Negro is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter. It is a film that questions black representation in Hollywood and beyond. And, ultimately, by confronting the deeper connections between the lives and assassination of these three leaders: Malcom X, Martin Luther King Jr, and Medgar Evers. Baldwin and Peck have produced a work that challenges the very definition of what America stands for. The result is a radical, up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using Baldwin's original words and flood of rich archival material.
You can watch it on Netflix.
This week's book: The Bottom Billion
 Paul Collier reveals that fifty failed states--home to the poorest one billion people on Earth--pose the central challenge of the developing world in the twenty-first century. The book shines much-needed light on this group of small nations, largely unnoticed by the industrialized West, that are dropping further and further behind the majority of the world's people, often falling into an absolute decline in living standards. A struggle rages within each of these nations between reformers and corrupt leaders--and the corrupt are winning. Collier analyzes the causes of failure, pointing to a set of traps that ensnare these countries, including civil war, a dependence on the extraction and export of natural resources, and bad governance.
(Let us know if you have any suggestions for future Pick of the Week! It can be movies, books, podcasts, documentaries, etc.)
EPD Office Hours
José Antonio Ocampo, EPD Co-Director
Sign up online: https://tinyurl.com/officehours-ocampo
Jenny McGill, EPD Co-Director and Workshop Director
Sign up online: https://tinyurl.com/mcgill-oh
Ilona Vinklerova, EPD Manager
Sign up online: https://sipa.campusgroups.com/meetings/1060915/IlonaOfficeHours
Séléna Batchily, EPD Program Assitant
Every Tuesday | 10:30-12pm | Zoom: https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/j/93075308618?pwd=NGVCeTg1Q3FoMkMrSDlaWjRWV2lpQT09
Saiful Salihudin, EPD Program Assitant
By appointment for now : sas2409@columbia.edu
Finally, if you missed our last week's newsletter, you can check it out here.
All good things,
Séléna & Saiful |
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