Advisory Board
Kunle Adeyemi
Mbwana Alliy
Harry G. Broadman, PhD
Mark Grabowsky, MD, MPH
Philip Lisagor, MD, Col. Ret. US Army
Julie Makani, MD
Cynthia Ryan
Narimon Safavi
Ann M. Veneman
Steven Wozencraft
Kunle Adeyemi
Kunlé Adeyemi is an architect, designer and ‘urbanist’. He is 2011 Callison Distinguished Visiting Lecturer of the University of Washington, teaching and researching ‘The Modern City in the Age of Globalization’ in Chandigarh – India’s first planned modernist city.
Adeyemi has a track record of conceiving and completing high profile, high quality projects in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. He carried out many of these projects as Senior Associate and Project Principal at the world renowned Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Netherlands. These include the award winning Samsung Museum of Art, SNU Museum, NM Rothschild Bank London, Shenzhen Stock Exchange tower China, Prada Transformer Korea, Central Library, Strategic Studies Center, Headquarters for Qatar Foundation Doha and Lagos 4th Mainland bridge/masterplan.
Born and raised in Nigeria, Adeyemi studied architecture at the University of Lagos, where he began his early career before joining OMA/Rem Koolhaas. In 2010, after nearly a decade at OMA, he moved on to start his own practice NLÉ focusing on ‘the architecture of developing cities’.
He has pursued his interest via a number of research papers and study opportunities, including a post-professional degree from Princeton University, where with Peter Eisenman he investigated rapid urbanization and the role of market economies in developing cities of the global South, focusing on Lagos. His hypothesis ‘Urban Crawl’ published in the Log Journal 2007.
Adeyemi is frequently an invited speaker, lecturer and visiting critic at prestigious institutions such as the Guggenheim New York, Harvard University, the Cooper Union, School of Oriental and African Studies, Architectural Association in London, ETH in Zurich, Chandigarh College of Architecture India and TUDelft in the Netherlands.
Mbwana Alliy
Mbwana Alliy is the founder and managing partner at Savannah Fund, an Africa focused Technology Venture Capital fund that runs both an accelerator and seed investments in e-commerce, gaming, education technology and social networking. In his work in building technology ecosystems and bridges between he has co-taught classes and spoken about Africa technology and entrepreneurship at University of Cape Town, Stanford University, University College London and Stanford Graduate School of Business.
He is passionate about product development and launching new ventures in technology. He is an experienced Product Manager within consumer web, enterprise Software & SaaS. He is originally from Tanzania and has lived and worked in 3 continents (USA, Europe and Africa). He has a Bachelor’s Engineering degree from Bristol University and an MBA from Stanford Graduate school of Business.
Harry G. Broadman, PhD
Building on his thirty-five year career in international finance, emerging markets private equity, negotiating foreign investment and trade agreements, executive-level public policy-making, and overseeing large applied research programs, Harry G. Broadman recently joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University, where he is Director of the university’s new Council on Global Enterprise and Emerging Markets, at the graduate School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington DC. He is also a Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins’ Foreign Policy Institute.
Concurrently, Broadman is CEO and Managing Partner of Proa Global Partners LLC, a boutique global business strategy management consulting firm that develops and helps execute innovative approaches to capitalize on new business opportunities in emerging markets while mitigating commercial, political, corruption, and reputational risks. The firm’s clients include investment banks, private equity firms, sovereign wealth funds, multilateralfinancial institutions, and corporations.
Broadman is a monthly columnist for Forbes; Newsweek (Japan); and Gulf News, where he writes on the intersection of global business and public policy.
In addition, he is extensively engaged as a keynote speaker on the dynamics of global markets; drivers of prospective shifts in economic policy and regulatory regimes; innovations underway in international investment operations and strategies; and impending changes in the political risk environment. His audiences are typically senior executives and officials in the private- and public-sectors around the world.
Throughout Broadman’s profession he has developed deep practitioner expertise in the design and diagnostics of multinational corporate operations; supply chain management and market integration efficiencies; cross-border deal origination and capital-raising; anti-corruption, compliance and reputational due diligence strategies; innovative approaches to asset allocation and development of performance metrics; competitive market intelligence; formation of strategic alliances, public-private-partnerships and CSR initiatives; antitrust and competition policy reform; project finance; corporate governance reform; and economic development policy.
Broadman’s sectoral expertise is mainly in finance and banking; oil & gas and minerals; a broad set of industries in the services sectors, especially telecommunications, aviation, shipping and ports, rail, trucking, construction and entertainment; capital-intensive manufacturing and industrial products; non-fossil fuel energy & natural resources; and regulated infrastructure utilities.
He has worked at the field-level in all of the advanced countries, and with few exceptions, most emerging markets, including Africa; China; India; Russia and the CIS; Eastern and Central Europe and the Balkans; Brazil and much of Latin America; most of East Asia, including Myanmar; and parts of the MiddleEast.
In late 2015 Broadman stepped down as Senior Managing Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), where he founded and led PwC’s Management Consulting Emerging Markets Business Strategy Practice, which realized US$7 million in global annual fees and encompassed more than 25 professionals around the world. He also served as PwC’s Chief Economist.
Prior to PwC, Broadman was Managing Director and served on the Investment Committee at Albright Capital Management LLC, a private equity and alternative strategy investment fund focused exclusively on emerging markets. He was also Managing Director at Albright Stonebridge Group, a global consultancy chaired by former US Secretary of State MadeleineAlbright.
Previously, Broadman was a senior official at the World Bank Group, where he negotiated and executed some of the Bank Group’s largest loan operations, including those in China and East Asia; Russia and the CIS and the Balkans; and sub-SaharanAfrica.
Before joining the Bank Group, he served in the Executive Office of the President as US Assistant Trade Representative, where he oversaw all US negotiations on international trade and investment in the services sectors in the creation of both NAFTA and the WTO, including the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS); led all negotiations of US Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs); sat on the Board of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC); and served on the White House Committee on Foreign Investment in the US(CFIUS).
Earlier, Broadman served in the White House as Chief of Staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and on Capitol Hill as Chief Economist for the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, then chaired by Senator John Glenn.
Prior to those appointments, Broadman was Assistant Director of Resources for the Future, Inc.; Consultant at the Rand Corporation; Fellow at the Brookings Institution; and on the faculties of Harvard University and Johns HopkinsUniversity.
Broadman received an A.B. in economics and history, magna cum laude, from Brown University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and an A.M. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan.
He is a life-time Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Member of the Bretton Woods Committee. He serves in several non-executive board of director roles, including on the Board of Directors of The Corporate Council on Africa, the Board of Directors of Partners for Democratic Change, and the Board of Advisors of the Global Business SchoolNetwork.
Broadman has published several books, the two most recent being Africa’s Silk Road: China and India’s New Economic Frontier and From Disintegration to Reintegration: Russia and the Former Soviet Union in International Trade. He has also authored numerous professional articles published in peer-reviewed economics, foreign policy and lawjournals.
Mark Grabowsky, MD, MPH
Mark Grabowsky is Vice President of Pantheryx, Inc where he is responsible for introducing their innovative diarrhea treatment into developing countries. Formerly he was Chief Operating Officer of the Office of the UN Special Envoy for Malaria and Financing the Health MDGs. He has 25 years’ experience in global health and is a leading expert on prevention and child health. He has made substantial contributions in measles elimination, polio eradication, and malaria prevention through his innovative approaches to rapid and equitable service delivery. He has founded and led the Measles Initiative and the Alliance for Malaria Prevention which focused on rapid scale-up of service delivery through integrated mass campaigns.
Dr. Grabowsky has held positions at The World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the American Red Cross, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Canadian International Development Agency and U.S. National Vaccine Program Office.
Among the 50 developing countries he has worked in, he has spent substantial time in Kenya, Vietnam, Yemen, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and China. Dr. Grabowsky is a graduate of Washington and Lee University, Peabody College of Education, Medical College of Virginia, the University of Virginia Medial Internship Program, and the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine. He also served as a teacher in the Peace Corps in Kenya and is Board Certified in Public Health and Preventive Medicine.
Col. Philip Lisagor, MD, FACS, US Army (Ret)
Philip Lisagor is a cardiothoracic surgeon and 20-year veteran of the armed forces. He joined the U.S. Army Reserves as a Staff Surgeon, serving in numerous missions as surgeon and Commander at Army field hospitals all over the world including the Green Zone hospital in Iraq. His areas of specialty include third world trauma centers, the ethics of triage, and applications of total quality management to combat hospital units.
Philip has served as Assistant Dean and Professor of Surgery at the University of Nevada School of Medicine, and Surgeon-in-Chief at the Veterans Hospital in Reno; and has acted as Clinical Assistant Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences since 1996.
In addition to being an active member in the Northern California Chapter, American College of Surgeons, Philip has been an Editorial reviewer for the Journal of Trauma, and acted as an American Board of Surgery Associate Oral Examiner, San Francisco, 2006. He has received dozens of Army achievement medals and commendations, including the Bronze Star and the Iraq Theatre Ribbon, and was also given the Distinguished Service Award from the University of Chicago Medical School Alumni Association in 2007.
Philip received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Illinois, and his MD from University of Chicago. He was a USPHS Fellow in Chemistry at University of Chicago, and received Executive training as an Ally Fellow of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard. He has been certified by the American Board of Surgery since 1983, and by the American Board of Thoracic Surgery since 1995. He is licensed in both California and Nevada.
Julie Makani, MD
Dr. Julie Makani is a lecturer at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS), which is the main clinical, academic and research centre in Tanzania.
Her two related areas of specialty are malaria and Sickle Cell Disease (SCD), a blood disorder. SCD confers protection against the malaria infection. Hematology (the study of blood) and blood transfusion are her major areas of study. With support from the KEMRI-Wellcome program she received a Training fellowship from the Wellcome Trust to establish a systematic framework for comprehensive research and care, with one of the largest cohorts of SCD patients in Africa. Due to its molecular basis, SCD presents great opportunities for integrating clinical, epidemiological, patho-physiological and genetic research.
MUHAS is a collaborative site for the Malaria Genomic Epidemiology Network (MalariaGEN) Grand Challenges Program which attempts to combine human genome technologies with large-scale epidemiological studies. Dr. Makani is a member of Multi-lateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM) Secretariat Advisory Committee and of the Royal College of Physicians of United Kingdom, and holds an appointment as Clinical Research Fellow at the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford.
Cynthia Ryan
Cynthia Ryan is trustee of The Schooner Foundation, a progressive family foundation that focuses internationally on human rights, peace & security and economic opportunity. Ms. Ryan serves as a trustee or member of the Fund for Global Human Rights, Women for Women International, the Clinton Global Initiative, the Global Philanthropy Forum, the International Human Rights Funders Group, and the African Philanthropy Forum. Cynthia received her Bachelor of Arts from the New School for Social Research in New York and a Masters of Arts from the School of Oriental & African Studies at the University of London in England. She is a contributing author in the book, Women, Philanthropy and Social Change: Visions for a Just Society. Cynthia currently resides in Nairobi, Kenya.
Narimon Safavi
Narimon Safavi is an entrepreneur specializing in socially responsible diamond mining in West Africa. Mr. Safavi holds a B.S. in Chemistry and Philosophy from Illinois State University and has an extensive history of civic engagement and philanthropy. Mr. Safavi has served on the Board of Directors of numerous NGOs such as Citizens for Global Solutions, a lead NGO for the formation of the International Criminal Court, at the Hague, Netherlands. He also has served on the Advisory boards of the Chicago Public Radio, an NPR affiliate, as well as the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and the Latino Cultural Center of Chicago. He currently serves on the boards of the Gene Siskel Film Center (an affiliate of the Art Institute of Chicago), the James P. Gorter Institute of World Islamic Studies in Lake Forest, Illinois, and the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) in Washington, DC.
He spends a significant portion of the year traveling in Africa and Europe, and the Middle East for projects concerning business and activism.
He was born in Tehran, Iran and has lived in the Chicago-land area since 1976. He is fluent in Persian and Spanish and has familiarity with Turkish.
Ann M. Veneman
Ann M. Veneman has a distinguished career in public service, most recently serving as the Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) from 2005 to 2010. Veneman’s leadership and vision has been recognized both nationally and internationally. In 2009 she was named to the Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women list, ranking 46th and has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors.
At UNICEF Veneman directed a staff of over 11,000 in more than 150 countries around the world. She worked to support child health and nutrition, quality basic education for all, access to clean water and sanitation and the protection of children and women from violence, exploitation and HIV/AIDS. She traveled to more than seventy countries to review the plight of children, to witness the devastation caused by natural disaster, conflict, disease and exploitation, and to advance programs aimed at improving and saving lives. From 2001 to 2005 Veneman was Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), one of most diverse federal agencies with an annual budget of $113 billion and 110,000 employees. From 1986 to 1993, she served in various positions in the USDA, including Deputy Secretary, Deputy Undersecretary for International Affairs, and Associate Administrator of the Foreign Agricultural Service. At USDA, Veneman advanced an expanded trade agenda, food protection, progressive farm policy, responsible forest policy, and stronger nutrition programs. Veneman served as Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture from 1995 to 1999, overseeing the state agency responsible for nation’s largest agricultural producing state.
Veneman is a member of the board of Alexion, a global biopharmaceutical company that combines groundbreaking science with a steadfast commitment to meeting the needs of patients living with severe, life-threatening and often ultra-rare diseases. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and The Trilateral Commission and has participated annually at The World Economic Forum in Davos and the Clinton Global Initiative Forum.
Throughout her career Veneman has served on a number of advisory councils, committees and non-profit boards, particularly those involving higher education. Currently she is co-chair of Mothers Day Every Day and on the boards of the Close Up Foundation and Malaria No More. She is a frequent speaker on a range of topics including poverty alleviation, empowering women and girls, food security and nutrition, and global health.
A lawyer by training, Veneman has practiced law in both California and in Washington DC. Early in her career, she was a deputy public defender. Veneman holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California, Davis; a master’s degree in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley; and a juris doctor degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She has also been awarded honorary doctorate degrees from several universities and colleges.
Steven Wozencraft
Steven Wozencraft, Chairman and CEO of JOD Global Philanthropies, has spent the last 30 years of his career working with NGOs and not-for-profits.
He is the former President of The John O’Donnell Company, a New York financial development firm established in 1966, which specialized in helping NGOs and not-for-profit organizations. As President of the John O’Donnell Company he oversaw the development of organizations by helping them build capacity and raise over a billion dollars collectively.
Steven also serves as CEO and Chairman of the John O’Donnell Foundation and as Executive Vice President of the John D. Evans Foundation.
He has served on the boards of organizations around the globe, and he has assisted causes including The Boys Club of New York, Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens, the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Foundation, the Harlem Boys Choir, the Jewish Board of Family and Children Services, Empire State Pride Agenda, Kids Peace, and numerous others.
Steven currently serves on the boards of the Vet Voice Foundation, the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, Positive Young People Foundation (PYP) Advisory Board and the Atlas Corps Board of Directors. He is a past board member of South Coast Medical Center, University of Michigan Center for Global Health External Advisory Board, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), and Friend Factor.
Internationally he has been an founding organizer of the United Nations Nexus Global Youth summit sponsored by UNDP, Founding Member of the Clinton Global Initiative, member Department of States Fine Arts Committee which over sees the State Departments Diplomatic Reception Rooms as well as the Global Equality Fund at the U.S. State Department , TED, and he is an inaugural member of the 2010 White House Next Generation Leadership program. As a member of the Partners Committee of the Global Equality Fund (GEF), he has worked directly with Secretary’s of State Kerry and Clinton to raise funding and awareness of Global work of the funds work in civil society.
In 2012, Steve was Co-Chair of the 2012 OutServe Service members Legal Defense Network National Dinner and he is an occasional contributor to the Huffington Post.
Last but not least all of of his Social media accounts are SWLaguna. (Twitter, Snapchat, Tumblr, Periscope and Instagram)
