CUPID: Conference

Lant Pritchett is Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (as of July 1, 2007).

In addition he works as a consultant to Google.org, is a non-resident fellow of the Center for Global Development, and is a senior fellow of BREAD. He is also co-editor of the Journal of Development Economics.

He graduated from Brigham Young University in 1983 with a B.S. in Economics and in 1988 from MIT with a PhD in Economics.

After finishing at MIT Lant joined the World Bank, where he held a number of positions in the Bank's research complex between 1988 and 1998, including as an adviser to Lawrence Summers when he was Vice President 1991-1993. From 1998 to 2000 he worked in Indonesia. From 2000 to 2004 Lant was on leave from the World Bank as a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In 2004 he returned to the World Bank and moved to India where he worked until May 2007.

He has been part of the team producing many World Bank reports, including: World Development Report 1994: Infrastructure for Development, Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn't and Why (1998), Better Health Systems for Indias Poor: Findings, Analysis, and Options (2003),World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for the Poor, Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reforms (2005).

In addition he has authored (alone or with one of his 22 co-authors) over 50 papers published in refereed journals, chapters in books, or as articles, as least some of which are sometimes cited. In addition to economics journals his work has appeared in specialized journals in demography, education, and health. In 2006 he published his first solo authored book Let Their People Come.

Lant, an American national, was born in Utah in 1959 and raised in Boise Idaho. Perhaps because of this, he has worked in, or traveled to, over forty countries and has lived in three other countries: Argentina (1978-80), Indonesia (1998-2000), and India (2004-2007).

Lant has been married since 1981 to Diane Tueller Pritchett and together they have three children

Dr. Mohapatra, World Bank

Sanket Mohapatra is an economist with the Development Prospects Group at the World Bank. His interest in development economics began during an internship at the Bank in 2002, when he co-authored a background paper on the determinants of capital inflows and outflows for the Global Development Finance report.

The following year, Sanket went on to co-author a chapter on corporate financing patterns for 2003 Global Development Finance report. In addition, he worked with faculty at Columbia University to explore the links between liberalization episodes and changes in poverty and inequality in several developing countries.

His research interests include international capital flows, sovereign and sub-sovereign ratings, poverty, inequality and growth, and the development impact of remittances and migration. Prior to his current assignment, he worked as an economist with the Africa Region of the International Monetary Fund. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia and an masters degree from the Delhi School of Economics. He currently lives in Arlington, Virginia

Rodolfo de la Garza, Moderator, School of International & Public Affairs, Columbia University
Rodolfo de la Garza is Deputy Chair of the Department of International and Public Affairs and the Eaton Professor of Administrative Law and Municipal Science in the Political Science Department. He also leads the Project on Immigration, Ethnicity, and Race, which is a part of Columbia's Institute of Social and Economic Research and Policy. De la Garza also is affiliated with the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, a think tank housed at the University of Southern California that conducts policy research on issues affecting Latino communities. De la Garza is a vice president of the Institute, which will now have affiliations with Columbia, Claremont, and the University of Texas, Austin.

Ms. Anke Strauss, Liaison Officer, IOM Office of the Permanent Observer to the United Nations
Ms. Strauss has been working as Liaison Officer at the Office of the IOM Permanent Observer to the United Nations since June 2005. The mission of the Office is to contribute to the political, social, economic and humanitarian debate and action on migration within the multilateral framework of international dialogue and cooperation of the United Nations.

Ms. Strauss has dedicated a large part of her career to issues related to international migration, post-crisis transition and recovery, including transitional justice and reparations. Before joining the IOM Observer Office in New York, Ms. Strauss worked as Senior Legal Officer/Team Leader for Property Loss within the German Forced Labour Compensation Programme at IOM in Geneva; as Director of Legal Department at the Commission for Real Property Claims of Displaced Person and Refugees in Sarajevo (1999-2001) and as Legal Officer at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany in Berlin (1996-1998).

Ms. Strauss is a German national and holds a law degree with the qualification as judge.

Susan Purdin, International Rescue Committee
Susan Purdin, RN, MPH, is Senior Technical Advisor on Reproductive Health (covering safe motherhood, gender-based violence, family planning, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections) at the International Rescue Committee's global headquarters in New York. In this position, she provides guidance on projects addressing the needs of persons affected by armed conflict in 25 countries around the world. In addition, to her work with the IRC she holds an adjunct faculty position in Columbia University's Forced Migration and Health Program, teaching courses on program planning, reproductive health and HIV.

Her career has focused on public health in the international arena since 1986. She is internationally recognized as an expert in the provision of humanitarian assistance in general and in reproductive health in particular. Ms Purdin led the development of phase one of the Sphere Project which fostered consensus among international NGOs on minimum standards for humanitarian assistance. In 1999 she received the Global Health Council award for "Best Practice in the Field of Global Health" for her work providing field-based, on-site, technical assistance to reproductive health projects in conflict settings. Additionally, her work focuses on developing the capacity of program staff to collect and use data to provide good quality evidence-based services for populations served by the IRC worldwide.

She has worked in: Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo, Lebanon, Liberia, Macedonia, Malawi, Morocco, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Rwanda, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Zambia.

She is a member of the American Public Health Association, the Global Health Council, the Reproductive Health Response in Conflict Consortium and the Interagency Working Group on Reproductive Health in Refugee Situations.

Alastair Ager, PhD, is Professor of Clinical Population and Family Health in the Mailman School of Public Health. He also holds appointments with the University of Oxford, Tulane University, and Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh, where he served as Foundation Director of the Institute of International Health and Development until 2004. He has worked in the field of international health and development for approaching twenty years, after originally training in psychology at the universities of Keele, Wales and Birmingham in the UK. He was head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Malawi from 1989 until 1992, and has wide international experience as a lecturer, researcher and consultant across sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, Europe and North America, working with a range of intergovernmental, non-governmental and governmental agencies. Immediately before joining Columbia he served as Senior Research Manager for the UK Department for International Development, with responsibility for the agency's $50 million per annum global portfolio of health and education research. He is currently chair of the Psychosocial Working Group, and Board Member of the Antares Foundation, supporting the development of effective staff care within the humanitarian sector. He is author of over one hundred scholarly publications. His current research and writing is focused in the areas of refugee mental health, psychosocial well-being and cultural resources; the planning and evaluation of health and social care programs; and the role of research in humanitarian and development assistance.

Michael W. Cutler graduated from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York in 1971 with a B.A. in Communications Arts and Sciences. Mr. Cutler began working for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in October 1971 when he entered on duty as an Immigration Inspector assigned to John F. Kennedy International Airport. From 1973 until 1974 He was assigned as an examiner to the unit which was responsible for adjudicating petitions filed by United States Citizens and Lawfully Admitted Permanent Resident Aliens (LPRs) on behalf of their alien spouses to accord them LPR status. His goal in this assignment was to attempt to uncover fraud marriages and fraud marriage rings.

In August 1975 he became a Criminal Investigator (Special Agent) for the INS at NYC. He rotated through virtually every squad in the Investigations Branch. AS a special agent he conducted investigations and arrests of individuals involved in a wide variety of immigration-related violations of law including a number of international terrorists.

From 1988 until 1991 he was assigned as the INS representative to the Unified Intelligence Division (UID) of the DEA in New York. In 1991 he was promoted to the position of Senior Special Agent and was assigned to the Organized Crime, Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) which required that he work with members of other law enforcement agencies including the FBI, DEA, ATF, U.S. Customs and local and state police as well as law enforcement organizations of other countries including Israel, Canada, Great Britain and Japan, to conduct investigations of aliens involved in major drug trafficking organizations. These investigations ultimately resulted in the seizure of the assets of these criminals and their arrests and successful prosecutions for a wide variety of criminal violations.

Mr. Cutler retired from the INS in February 2002 after a career that spanned some 30 years.

Mr. Cutler has testified as an "Expert witness" at more than a dozen Congressional hearings on issues relating to the enforcement of immigration laws having been called by members of both political parties and having appeared in both houses of Congress.