International Development: Bridging the World of Theory, Policy and Practice

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The Essential Course to Prepare Professionals for Work Opportunities and Careers in International Development

Montreal, October 21-25 2013.

We are pleased to announce the offering of our highly successful executive education certificate program, International Development: Bridging The Worlds Of Theory, Policy And Practice. The intensive 5-day course is a practical program designed to provide participants with the requisite knowledge, skills and strategies to prepare themselves for opportunities to work in the expanding field of international development and in a number of international development settings.

This program will be held in Montreal at McGill University’s downtown campus from October 21 – 25 at:

Desautels Faculty of Management
McGill University
1001 Sherbrooke Street West, 6th Floor

Program Objectives and Key Themes

Based on the Institute’s proven standards for multidisciplinary research and teaching, and with the vast array of practical development experience represented by our networks in the public, private and civil society realms, the program will cover:

• An introduction to international development theories, concepts, approaches, and policy frameworks relating to international development taught by some of the leading university professors and practitioners in the field in North America;
• Insights into thematic and sectoral issues, including important trends, emerging questions and challenges in international development taught by experienced international development professionals;
• Insights into how best to leverage one’s existing skills and expertise to pursue opportunities to work in the field of international development including post program support to develop tailor made work plans and ongoing mentorship for participants.

Teaching Team October 2013

The teaching team will be made up of leading experts, practitioners and innovators across a variety of disciplines and sectors.

Philip Oxhorn (PhD, Harvard) is a McGill professor of Political Science and Founding Director of the Institute for the Study of International Development (ISID). His areas of expertise include democratic development, civil society, anti-corruption, international indigenous issues, human rights and governance. Dr. Oxhorn works extensively on research relating to international development issues in Latin America and Africa. Robin McLay is the Executive Director of McGill University’s Institute for the Study of International Development. He came to McGill from the Canada School of Public Service where he served as its Director of International Partnerships. He also served as the Director of Research at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and was formerly CIDA’s Director of Democratic Institutions and Conflict. Robin was the former head of one of Harvard’s Interfaculty Initiatives and continues to serve as a Founding Member of the Harvard University School of Public Health’s Leadership Council.

Michael Brown has held leadership and advisory positions with UNDP, the World Bank, UN Peace Missions and USAID for more than 15 years. His central areas of expertise are development, conflict and dispute resolution. Michael’s projects have addressed mediation and consensus building, constitutional development, rule of law, conflict assessment, transitional governance, political leadership, land law and policy, indigenous peoples and rights, natural resource disputes, former rebel forces and child soldiers. Michael was the Senior Peace and Development Advisor for UNDP Ecuador and Director of their conflict prevention and peacebuilding program in the Colombia-Ecuador border zone; he received UNDP Ecuador’s Leadership Award for this work.

Marie-Hélène Adrien (PhD, McGill) is a Professor of Practice and a Founding Member of the Leadership Council of the McGill Institute for the Study of International Development. She is the President and a Senior Consultant of Universalia, a firm specialising in evaluation and management in international development. Over the past 22 years of her career she has conducted more than 100 assignments with various agencies such as the World Bank, the Caribbean Development Bank, the UN, the African Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, the Canadian International Development Agency, the International Development Research Center, various bilateral agencies and NGOs.

Eliane Ubalijoro is a professor of practice for public and private sector partnerships at McGill University, where her research interests focus on innovation in global health and sustainable development. Dr. Ubalijoro is currently designing ISID’s Executive Leadership Initiative, an upcoming program to help equip executives in international development with tools that support inner and outer sustainable transformation towards global prosperity. She is a the project manager and an investigator on a Gates Foundation Grand Challenges in Global Health phase 2 project led by Professor Timothy Geary, the director of McGill’s Institute of Parasitology. She is a member of the Presidential Advisory Council for Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

Rick Stapenhurst is both a consultant/advisor to the World Bank Institute, where until his retirement, he was team leader of the governance/ parliamentary program and a Professor of Practice at McGill University’s Institute for the Study of International Development. He joined the World Bank in 1996 and concentrated on anti-corruption, good governance and parliamentary development. This work involved extensive travel throughout Africa and Asia where we worked with legislators, government officials, civil society representatives and journalists. He has written extensively on issues related to anti-corruption and parliamentary strengthening.

Yvan Conoir has more than 25 years experience in working on the design, implementation and evaluation of humanitarian and peace-building programs and training related initiatives with various UN agencies, the World Bank, CIDA, the EU, International NGOs and other private actors. In recent years, Mr. Conoir acted as Senior Evaluation consultant for Universalia, leading major evaluations for the World Bank, the United Nations, the European Union, CIDA, Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Canada and France and other private/NGO entities. On top of his professional experience in more than 60 countries, Yvan Conoir has authored various books on Humanitarian action, DDR, and Peace-building. Since 2007, he has been teaching courses on peace building and humanitarian operations at a number of prominent universities and centres. He is also a board member of Managers Without Borders (Université Laval) and of Emergency Architects of Canada.

Brian Philips is a development practitioner with a broad range of experience at regional, national and international levels. His career with the federal government spanned 29 years, beginning with a decade working on Aboriginal economic development issues in Canada’s North. As Senior Advisor, Indigenous Peoples at CIDA, he led its policy efforts to ensure that Indigenous Peoples could participate in Canada’s development assistance programming. This tied into CIDA’s thematic priorities: human rights, governance, conflict preventions, food security, sustainable economic growth and environmental sustainability. For the last several years, Brian was Deputy Director of the Agency`s International Strategy and Donor Relations Division, overseeing policy engagement with the UN, the OECD, G8, G20, the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, and emerging bilateral aid agencies. He was the lead negotiator for Canada, Australia and New Zealand for the UN Conference on Least Developed Countries.

Terry Gray is part of the Senior Management Team within the International and Canadian Programs division of World Vision Canada. He has worked in collaboration with various industry partners on development projects throughout his twenty-three year career in the NGO sector. This experience, combined with his institutional capacity development work with regional government, has provided an opportunity for a multi-sector approach to integrating economic, social and environmental imperatives into local development initiatives. He is an accredited partnership broker through the International Business Leader’s Forum/UK’s Overseas Development Institute’s Partnership Brokers Association Scheme.

Sonia Lazlo (PHD Uof T) is Associate Professor of Economics at McGill University. Her main research areas include rural development, access to markets, and the relationship between income, health and education in economic development. In addition to using traditional analytic tools to understand some of the micro economic dimensions of economic development at the individual and household level, she has been increasingly using experimental and behavioral methods to shed light on important questions about economic decision making. Laszlo has focused most of her research on Latin America and the Caribbean. She is a member the Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche en Organizations (CIRANO) and the Grupo de Analysis para el Desarrollo. In 2005 she co founded and has since been an executive member of the Canadian Development Economics Study Group, which groups academic and policy development economists in Canada.

Anne Drost practises in the Energy, Environmental, Climate Change and Regulatory Law Group of Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP. She is co-chair of the Corporate Social Responsibility Law Practice Group and also practises in the areas of Mining Law, Aboriginal Law and Real Estate Law. In Environmental Law, Ms. Drost has experience in advising clients on regulatory approvals, compliance and in transactions such as the acquisition or disposition of land. Anne is regularly a sessional lecturer at the McGill Faculty of Law. She teaches courses on Energy Law and Climate Change and has taught Land Use Planning, Environmental Law and Municipal Law in past years.

Jim Cooney retired as Vice President, International Government Affairs for Placer Dome Inc. on May 1, 2006, following that Company’s acquisition by Barrick Gold. He held positions at Placer Dome from 1982 to 2006 in the areas of social and political risk management, government relations, sustainable development and strategic planning. He is a past Director of the North South Institute, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Pacific Basin Economic Council. Representing Placer Dome as a founding member of the United Nations Global Compact with Business, he worked with U.N. agencies and civil society organizations in a project on conflict-sensitive business practices. He was actively engaged in the World Bank’s Extractive Industries Review from 2002 to 2004, during which he served in his personal capacity on the World Bank’s External Advisory Panel for the internal evaluation of its oil, gas and mining projects. From 2004 to 2006, he was advisor on the development of IFC’s Performance Standards on Social and Environmental Sustainability.    

ISID's Executive Education courses do not count for credit towards a degree at McGill University.