Title: International Development in the COVID-19 Era: What is our added value?
Date: Friday, September 25, 2020
Time: 1:00pm-2:00pm (note time changed)
Panelists:
- Jean Lowry, CAIDP, President and University of Waterloo READI Project Director
- Bill Duggan, University of Waterloo READI Project Director
- Bessma Momani, University of Waterloo Assistant Vice-President, International Relations and Professor in Political Science
- Dr. Rohinton P. Medhora, President of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
Description: What are the contributions that international development can make in addressing COVID-19? What does the future hold for international development? Please join us for a conversation between international development practitioners and policy makers on the implications the global community faces in the COVID-19 era, the security challenges, and the future of international development projects during a global pandemic.
There will be an opportunity for the audience members to ask the panel their questions during a Q&A session at the end of the webinar.
Moderator: Laura Wilson, Project Officer, University of Waterloo READI Project
Panelists:
Jean Lowry, CAIDP, President and University of Waterloo READI Project Director
Jean Lowry has over 30 years of experience, initially working in the environmental sector in Canada and as of 1994 working in international development. She has lived or worked in Indonesia, the Philippines, Guyana, Barbados and Belize and has led programs in Ghana, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Mozambique, Kenya and elsewhere. During her international development career Ms. Lowry has been a consultant or director of many multi million-dollar projects on behalf of the Government of Canada, the Inter-American Development Bank, IFAD, and the European Union. Ms. Lowry holds a B.Sc. in Physical Geography from the University of Winnipeg, and an M.Sc. in Resources and Environmental Management from the University of Calgary. She has been a member of CAIDP for many years and was elected to the role of President in March 2018. Since then she has led CAIDP’s engagement with GAC and others in ensuring that private sector members of the international development community have a voice and an opportunity to work actively towards improvement in service delivery. Since the advent of COVID-19 she has represented CAIDP on the GAC COVID-19 Dialogue Group which provides input and advice to GAC on priority issues and concerns.
Bill Duggan, University of Waterloo READI Project Director
Bill Duggan has worked successfully in the field of international development for over 30 Years. He has managed and provided technical advice for numerous Government of Canada-funded development initiatives, along with projects funded by the UN, the Millennium Development Corporation, the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, and others.
He has broad experience assisting in the design, implementation and monitoring of initiatives focused on higher education, governance strengthening, local economic development, primary health and basic education services, vocational training, women’s economic empowerment, renewable energy and civil society strengthening. From 2008-2015, Bill led a highly-regarded health and basic education strengthening project in Indonesia and since 2016 has led the University of Waterloo’s actuarial science strengthening project (READI) in Indonesia.
Bessma Momani, University of Waterloo Assistant Vice-President, International Relations and Professor in Political Science
Dr. Bessma Momani is Assistant Vice President of International Relations (2020) and Full Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo, Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, D.C. She was a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at both the Brookings Institution and Stimson Center in Washington, D.C., a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, and formerly a visiting scholar at Georgetown University's Mortara Center. She was a 2015 Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and now sits on its board of directors. She is also a Fulbright Scholar. Dr. Momani currently sits on the National Security Transparency Advisory Group (NS-TAG) to advise the Deputy Minister of Public Safety Canada and other Government officials on improving transparency to Canada's national security and intelligence departments and agencies. She is a frequent contributor to international media on international affairs and writes regular op-eds in the Globe and Mail and Time Magazine.
Dr. Rohinton P. Medhora, President of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
Rohinton P. Medhora is president of CIGI, joining in 2012. He served on CIGI’s former International Board of Governors from 2009 to 2014. Previously, he was vice president of programs at Canada’s International Development Research Centre. His fields of expertise are monetary and trade policy, international economic relations and development economics.
Rohinton was recently named to The Lancet and the Financial Times Commission on Governing Health Futures 2030, as well as to the Commission on Global Economic Transformation, co-chaired by Nobel economics laureates Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz. He serves on the boards of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and the McLuhan Foundation, and is on the advisory board of the WTO Chairs Programme and UNU-MERIT.
He has published extensively on these issues in professional and non-technical journals, and has produced several books: Finance and Competitiveness in Developing Countries (Routledge, 2001) and Financial Reform in Developing Countries (Macmillan, 1998), which he co-edited with José Fanelli. In 2013, he was co-editor of Canada-Africa Relations: Looking Back, Looking Ahead, which is volume 27 in the influential Canada Among Nations book series. In 2014, he co-edited International Development: Ideas, Experience, and Prospects (Oxford University Press) and Crisis and Reform: Canada and the International Financial System, which is volume 28 in the Canada Among Nations book series.