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New Global Initiative Director Takes Broad Outlook
When Kathleen Cooke Ryan took up her new role as executive director of the HBS Global Initiative last March, she joined a thriving organization. After the successful 1999 launch of its first international research center -- the Asia-Pacific Research Office, in Hong Kong -- the Initiative began gearing up to open its second center in Latin America over the summer.
But Ryan, a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, was well prepared for the School's accelerating interest in international research. She arrived at Harvard after serving for seven years as chief of staff for Tufts president John DiBiaggio and another five years coordinating one of the Fletcher School's academic programs with activities in Japan, China, Korea, Canada, and Russia.
"Coming to the Global Initiative was a natural progression for me," says Ryan, who has worked and studied in Japan. "And it is exciting to be here now while the Business School is focusing more on international research and programs."
Ryan says her main objective this year is to facilitate and encourage the "international dimension" in faculty research. "Dean Clark wants an international component in everything we teach here," she notes. "One major goal of the Initiative is to feed international cases into the MBA and Executive Education Programs, in all fields of study. We're providing the incentive and the support so faculty can do that."
Launched in 1995, the Global Initiative has begun establishing research centers in key regions to expand the School's global perspective and to enhance collaborations with alumni and business leaders around the world. The Latin America Research Center in Buenos Aires builds on the momentum established by the Initiative's success in Hong Kong.
"Opening the Latin America center was an important step," Ryan notes. "There has been strong faculty interest in the region for a long time. And Dean Clark felt that with so many vital business interests in the area, we needed to be there."
Argentina's President Fernando de la Rúa clearly agreed with that assessment, showing his support for the new center by joining the inaugural dinner on the first night of the two-day conference held in Buenos Aires for the center's opening in August. "The conference was our opportunity to create a network with local practitioners and academics and to get a jump-start on our research activities in the region," Ryan says. "We also talked to local business leaders about what we will be doing there and outlined the benefits of being featured in a case study." (A complete report on the conference will appear in the December Bulletin.)
Each center has an on-site executive director (Camille Tang Yeh (MBA 1980) in Hong Kong and Gustavo A. Herrero (MBA 1976) in Buenos Aires) and a research staff to assist faculty members with their work. With HBS researchers currently studying companies in more than forty countries, Ryan says choosing the location of the research centers must be done very carefully. "We have to look at where our faculty have been and where the bulk of their research is coming from. We want to broaden horizons, but we also have to be sure that there is a natural inclination on the part of researchers to go to a particular area."
Where will the next centers be? "Plans for centers in Europe are evolving, though the specific location has yet to be determined," Ryan says. "It's still in the feasibility stage, but it is likely to open some time next year."
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