Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Welcome to Dhaka

My location and life have changed dramatically since I've last blogged. (I read recently in the >NYTimes of how blogs now fail at a higher rate than restaurants- and I had to agree- that's me). So here's my update of life since then.

I've been to Egypt, UAE and Turkey. I wrapped up teaching 2 courses and completed my time at Carnegie Mellon Qatar. I got into 2 business schools, waitlisted at 1, rejected at 2 and ultimately decided to go to University of Michigan for a Master of Science. A relationship ended and another...? And now I'm in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Why Bangladesh? Why come to apparently one of the least livable cities in the world?* I like the concept of Base of the Pyramid (BoP) business solutions to develop sustainable living and poverty alleviation solutions. And I'd like to get into the Ross School of Business at Michigan when I reapply this fall. Ross' C.K. Prahalad is known for his BoP teaching and I'm currently registered for a fall BoP course.

I started looking into some sort of sustainable development/BoP internship in India and even applied for one at d.light. But then I contacted a connection I made at the ICTD conference at Carnegie Mellon Qatar (where I was 1 metre from Bill Gates) with Global Communication Center (GCC), an NGO relative of Grameen Communications (GC) and Grameen Bank. Grameen is a microfinance bank that won its founder- Dr. Muhammad Yunus- a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

One thing led to another and here I am in Dhaka for one month to consult with GCC. More on the project later after my first day is done.

*My Bangladeshi friend and former colleague Faheem worried about me citing this data-crunching survey from the 'global north' re: Dhaka right from the get-go, as it could color the impressions I give others. I'll have 33 days to make my own conclusion and hope to document those observations here.

1 comment:

  1. That's so cool! I'm excited to hear about your adventures.

    ReplyDelete