Volans Team: Pamela Hartigan
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What do you wish your passport said about your working life and mission?
Global Resource Matchmaker for Entrepreneurs
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You're a citizen of where?
I don’t know. I was born to an Ecuadorian mother and an American father and was brought as a cultural amphibian living in Ecuador, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, and Mexico. My career focus was on Latin America and I traveled extensively to every country in that region up until 1997. Then, that year, work reasons brought me to Europe and we moved to tiny dairy town in rural France, about 30 minutes from Geneva, Switzerland. However, to make things a bit more complex, I have been married to an Australian from Perth for the last 35 years. My children currently live in Europe, my father lives in Washington, D.C., my in-laws are in Australia and the majority of my immediate relatives live in Ecuador while we live in France. So where am I from?
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Education in a nutshell?
Catholic convent schools run by nuns throughout my primary and secondary school years. Aside from the well-known after-effects of such an experience, the person with the strongest influence in shaping my early thinking was the Madre Esguerra, a Colombian nun and charismatic adherent of liberation theology whose impact on her students was such that we called on our parents to pay household servants a just wage and improve their working conditions. Our mini-revolution triggered parents to withdraw their daughters (I was sent to Catholic boarding school). Eventually the school was closed down to prevent the spread of its “Communist” tendencies. That always stayed with me. I came to the US to go to Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and went on to do Masters in Education, a Masters in International Economics in Belgium and ¬ back in the USA, a PhD in Clinical Psychology.
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Your working life?
Has been as eclectic as my “roots”. A key influence in my first career was Sherry Migdail who identified and engaged my entrepreneurial inclinations to help her set up an innovative program to address children with developmental delays. As I ventured into Clinical Psychology, my PhD Chair, Hans Furth, was instrumental in sharpening my thinking. Moving into the health field, I was fortunate enough to work and be influenced by “public health greats” including Dr. Ron St. John and Dr. Carlyle Guerra de Macedo (Pan American Health Organization), Dr. Tore Godal (Special Programme on Research and Training in Tropical Diseases and subsequently first Director of GAVI) and Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland (Director General of WHO and former Prime Minister of Norway). Today, the most important people who influence my thinking include the exceptional social entrepreneurs that I have worked with over the last 8 years.
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Things you are proudest of?
Of course, my family, including my 95 year old father although his continued and vibrant existence is not my doing. I am also proud of having set up the first network of HIV positive persons in Latin America and the Caribbean in 1990 when HIV/AIDS was a death sentence and guaranteed family and social ostracism, and having designed and implemented the first initiative of its kind at WHO to bring NGOs and governments closer together to work in health in Latin America. Finally, I am proud of having been responsible for the strategic orientation of the Schwab Foundation and for having been able to recognize it was time to move on and launch Volans Ventures to support social entrepreneurs in a different and critical way. Additionally, the fact that I have been able to keep up a daily exercise routine of running 7K for 35 years has proven to be a great long term investment with strong returns in the mental and physical health realm..
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One thing you wish you could change in your history?
Perhaps not change, but with age, I have learned to enjoy the present more. Seems too much of my early adult life was spent expending huge amounts of energy balancing career-family-and personal space. I have learned that such “balance” is rarely achieved. As a friend wisely told me (female of course), “”When your career is going great, either your marriage or your kids have problems. And when your marriage is great, your career is a mess – or your kids are driving you nuts. You can never have it all, so learn to live with that and you will be happier for it”.
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Most recent job?
First Managing Director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship (2001-2008).
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Something about the family that have to put up with all of this?
My husband, Martin –who spent 35 years in the world of economic development - and my children, Emilie and Jesse, both who have been blessed with a strong sense of social mission and the smarts and energy to drive it forward using their respective talents. And all the four-legged creatures that have populated our family at different points in time.
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Why Volans?
The biggest challenge we face is growing and sustaining innovative solutions to the massive global problems we currently face. This goes beyond talk shops and conferences that bring different sectors together and involves deploying the capital, the talent and the policies that trigger growth and adoption of these innovations. My work over the last 8 years with social entrepreneurs who are geared to catalyzing systemic change, and prior to that my work in the UN system which seems to be set up to have the opposite effect, has convinced me that we need new institutions to deal with the problems we face rather than rely on the old ones that don’t seem up to the task. Even those at the helm of these venerable institutions are the first to admit this. I recall Dr. Macedo, a highly influential Director of the Pan American Health Organization and a widely respected public health leader, expressing his frustration as follows on his inability to accelerate change in this large UN bureaucracy: “My job is to move the elephant. The only problem is that just when I think I have succeeded in getting the elephant to take a step forward, I realize I have only pushed the elephant’s layers of fat around. The elephant hasn’t budged.”
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Your potted vision for Volans 2010?
A highly leveraged and widely respected multi-sectoral platform that has successfully galvanized the growth of proven innovative solutions to global challenges. A dynamic venture that brings together new and improved business models and policy frameworks together with great talent and sources of capital.
Pamela Hartigan is a Volans Founding Partner and Director. From 2000 to 2008 she was the Managing Director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, a Swiss-based organization founded in 1998 and focused on advancing the practice of social entrepreneurship nationally, regionally and globally. The Foundation is the second organization started by Klaus Schwab, the first being the World Economic Forum. Dr. Hartigan is the first Managing Director of the Foundation and has been responsible for shaping the strategy and operations pursued by the Foundation to achieve its mission.
Dr. Hartigan is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, holds a Masters degree in International Economics, a Masters in Education and a PhD in Cognitive Psychology. Her new book, entitled The Power of Unreasonable People: How Entrepreneurs Create Markets that change the World and co-authored with John Elkington, will be released in February 2008 by Harvard Business Press. She is also an Adjunct Professor at Columbia School of Business in New York City.
Throughout her career, Dr. Hartigan has held varied leadership positions in multilateral health organizations and educational institutions as well as in entrepreneurial non-profits. She has been responsible for conceptualizing and creating new organizations, departments or programs across a variety institutional arrangements and multi-stakeholder platforms. In the area of health, Pamela headed up the Department of Health Promotion at the World Health Organization (1999-2001); was Programme Manager and Area Co-ordinator for Applied Field Research in the Special Programme on Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) of the World Bank, WHO, and UNDP (1997-1999). Between 1990 and 1997, she worked in WHO’s Regional Office for the Americas, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), as Chief of the Gender, Health and Development and Manager for Special Initiative in the HIV/AIDS Programme.