Building Development Partnerships with NGOs: The Experience of Corporate Foundations

Posted on 31 March 2010

The next session of the NGOs & Development study group, organized by the Humanitarian & Development NGOs Domain of the Hauser Center, will be held on Thursday, April 8^th from 4:00-5:00pm in Weil Town Hall (Belfer L1) at the Harvard Kennedy School.  The session will be lead by Shalaka Joshi, Vice President of Global Strategies, CSO Partners, and Salimah Samji, who was formerly a Program Manager, Google.org.

 

Please RSVP to Balu at ramaswami_balasubramaniam@hks10.harvard.edu .   

 

Shalaka Joshi began her career in social enterprise with the United Nations Children’s Fund.  She later worked with the Give India Foundation where she advised business leaders on innovative strategic philanthropy models, and Ashoka, a global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs. Her private sector experience includes ICICI Bank – India’s largest private sector bank – where she led the process of integrating private sector partners into the Bank’s initiatives in health, education and micro finance. She also served as Vice President of the IFMR Trust, a for-profit social enterprise dedicated to ensuring complete access to financial services for rural India. She was part of setting up their Network Enterprises Fund(tm) – India’s first equity fund focused on fixing rural supply chains across 14 sectors. Shalaka is currently Vice President of Global Strategy for CSO partners, a non-profit collaborative focused on increasing the scale and effectiveness of Indian civil society.

 

Salimah Samji is currently taking time off after two years as a Program Manager at Google.org, leading efforts to develop the transparency and accountability initiative in India. She spent three years at the World Bank in South Asia (based in India) as a social/rural development and monitoring/evaluation specialist.  Born in Kenya, Salimah has a bachelor’s in mathematics from the University of Waterloo (Canada) and a master’s in public administration in international development from the Harvard Kennedy School. She is a qualified Casualty Actuary who decided to change careers after spending 18 months working in Afghan refugee camps with a Canadian NGO based in Pakistan.  She has worked in Kenya, Canada, USA, Pakistan, India and Tajikistan. 

 

More About the Study Group 

The Study Group on NGOs and Development is organized by the Humanitarian & Development NGOs Domain of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University.  The group meets biweekly to consider, discuss and debate issues related to emerging paradigms in development, evolving roles of NGOs, and specific management, leadership and governance challenges.  The study group brings together interested students, practitioners dealing with these questions in real time, and academics investigating similar questions.  The goal is to create a climate for genuine discussion and lively exchange, in which all participants come to the table with a commitment to share, listen and reflect.  The study group is a space for building relationships, exchanging ideas and connecting real-world challenges to scholarly study of NGOs and their role in development.  Guests will serve as resource people and catalysts of discussion.