Members IICD's International Advisory Board
Ms. Ingrid Hagen (Chairperson) | Mr. Subbiah Arunachalam | Mr. Mike Jensen | Mr. Kerry McNamara | Mr. Monge | Mr. Jan Pronk | Mr. Kentaro Toyama | Mr. Michael Trucano
Ms. Ingrid Hagen - F&A Marketing Manager, Wholesale Clients International, Rabobank International, the Netherlands
Ingrid Hagen joined Rabobank International as Global Head Communications from her position as Marketing and Communication Manager for the Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO). In this capacity, she worked to close the gap between communications and the core business, building a brand through efforts in regional marketing, client loyalty and knowledge management.
Ingrid has over 15 years' experience in international business across the private, public and non-profit sectors. She spent seven years as Team Leader, International Programmes for IICD. Ingrid also worked for seven years at the World Bank’s CGIAR and the International Finance Corporation (IFC); the latter is the private sector investment arm of the World Bank Group. She holds a Master’s Degree in Business from Johns Hopkins University and has published a number of articles in international media on economic development and banking. She is also Editor-in-chief of UPsides, a magazine on finance and development.
Mr. Subbiah Arunachalam - Information Scientist, M.S., Development Researcher, Editor, India
Subbiah Arunachalam started his career as a research chemist, but found his calling in information science. In the past four decades, he has been a student of chemistry, a laboratory researcher (at the Central Electrochemical Research Institute and the Indian Institute of Science), and an editor of scientific journals (at the Publications and Information Directorate of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and the Indian Academy of Sciences). He was also the secretary of a scholarly academy of sciences (IASc), a teacher of information science (at the Indian National Scientific Documentation Centre), and a development researcher (at the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras).
While working with the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, he initiated the South-South Exchange Traveling Workshop to facilitate hands on cross-cultural learning for knowledge workers from Africa, Asia and Latin America engaged in ICT-enabled development.
Arun is on the editorial boards of six international refereed journals including Journal of Information Science, Scientometrics, and Journal of Community Informatics; a member of the international advisory board of IICD, The Hague, a trustee of the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, and a Trustee of the Voicing the Voiceless Foundation. Improving information access both for scientists and for the rural poor; scientometrics, ICT-enabled development and open access are among his current research interests.
Mr. Mike Jensen - Knowledge Analyst at IDRC and Owner, Jensen Independent ICT Consulting, South Africa
Mike Jensen is an independant consultant with experience in over 35 countries in Africa assisting in the establishment of information and communications systems over the last 15 years. A South African based Johannesburg, he sent his first email 20 years ago while studying rural planning and development in Canada.
He subsequently returned to South Africa to work as a journalist on the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg in 1983. When the paper closed he moved back to Canada and in 1986 he co-founded the country's national Internet service for NGOs, called coincidentally, The Web. After helping to set up a similar ISP in Australia in 1989, he returned to South Africa where he works with international development agencies, NGOs and governments assisting them in the formulation, management and evaluation of their Internet projects.
Besides being a member of IICD’s IAB, Mike is a trustee of the African IT Education Trust, a board member of the South African ISP for NGOs - SangoNet, and was a member of the African Conference of Ministers High Level Working Group which developed the African Information Society Initiative (AISI) in 1996.
Mr. Kerry McNamara - Scholar-in-Residence, School of Communication, American University, Washington D.C., USA
Kerry McNamara is a Scholar-in-Residence at the School of Communication at American University in Washington D.C.. Being an expert on the impact of information and communication technologies on economic and social development and poverty reduction, he served from January 2004 to January 2008 as chief knowledge officer of the Information for Development Program (infoDev), a public multi-donor research and advisory facility on technology and development at the World Bank. He led infoDev's work on mainstreaming new technologies in core development sectors (such as education, health, rural development and governance). From 2004 to 2006 he also managed infoDev's program of grants and technical assistance to technology business incubators in 10 African countries.
Previously, at the World Bank Institute, he was a principal architect of several innovative programmes focused on the impact of information, communication and knowledge on poverty and development, including the Global Knowledge Partnership and the Development Forum, the World Bank's first public online discussion facility. He also served on the expert Secretariat of the Digital Opportunity Task Force (DOT Force) convened by the G8 Heads of State in 2000-2001. In 2001 he was invited by the UK Government's Department for International Development to serve as the external member of a small team that developed DFID's strategy paper on "The Significance of Information and Communication Technologies for Reducing Poverty".
Mr. Monge - Project Development and International Relations Office, Omar Dengo Foundation,
Mr. Monge's work involves partnership development, identification of funding opportunities, preparation of project proposals, coordination of project activities with national and international organizations, and the promotion of services that the Foundation offers both nationally and internationally. He has been with the Omar Dengo Foundation since April 2000 where he has also conducted economic and educational-related impact and process evaluations and research on educational technology projects at the Research Department. Mr. Monge is currently a member of the International Advisory Board of IICD, and serves as Chair of the Membership Committee of the Global Knowledge Partnership.
His experience also includes research in economic development, health education and Internet-related work with non-government organizations in Costa Rica and with local and foreign universities. He has co-authored articles published on health education journals and he has made presentations at several professional and academic conferences. Mr. Monge has taught economics at the Costa Rica’s Institute of Technology and at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. His academic training at the University of Costa Rica includes a bachelor’s degree in Economics and completion of Licenciate studies in Economics, as well as doctoral work at the Department of Economics at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Mr. Jan Pronk - Former Minister of Development Cooperation, Professor Theory and Practice of Institute of Social Studies, the Netherlands
After having finished his study economics at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam Jan Pronk became research assistant of Prof. Jan Tinbergen at the same university. In the seventies he became a politician: Member of Parliament for the Social-Democratic Party (Partij van de Arbeid) and Minister for Development Cooperation. In the first half of the eighties he worked as an international civil servant for the United Nations (UNCTAD) in Geneva.
Thereafter Mr. Pronk returned to Dutch politics and became again Minister for Development Cooperation. During this time (in 1996) he founded IICD. Later Jan Pronk became Minister of Environment. He left Dutch politics in 2002 and was appointed as Professor at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague. From mid 2004 until the end of 2006 he have lived in Sudan as the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations, where he was leading the UN peace keeping operation (UNMIS). In 2007 Mr. Pronk returned to The Netherlands and resumed his position at the ISS.
Mr. Kentaro Toyama - Researcher, School of Information, University of California, Berkeley
Kentaro Toyama is a researcher in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. Untill 2009, he was assistant managing director of Microsoft Research India (MSR India), which opened in Bangalore in January, 2005. He played a critical role in establishing the lab and is responsible for helping guide its direction and growth. In addition to his responsibilities to MSR India overall, Kentaro leads the Technology for Emerging Markets research group as a principal researcher, and is a co-founder of the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD).
Before being named assistant managing director of MSR India, Kentaro spent seven years in MSR Redmond, Washington, U.S.A., and in Cambridge, U.K., working on computer vision, multimedia and geographic information systems. Kentaro earned his Ph.D. in computer science at Yale University and received a bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University. During the autumn of 2002, he took personal leave from Microsoft to teach mathematics at Ashesi University in Ghana.
Mr. Michael Trucano - Senior ICT & Education Policy Specialist, World Bank, USA
Mike Trucano is serving as the World Bank's focal point on the topic within the education sector. He previously served as the ICT and Education Specialist at infoDev, the multi-donor 'ICT knowledge shop' housed within the World Bank's Global ICT Department (GICT), where coordinated activities related to information and communication technologies and the Millennium Development Goals ("ICTs for MDGs"), especially as they related to education. He also led infoDev's work exploring the use of various low-cost ICT devices to meet developmental objectives in the social sectors. Highlights during his time at infoDev include Knowledge Maps: ICT and Education (what we know, and what we don't, about ICT use in education in developing countries), over 75 country-level surveys of ICT and education in Africa and the Caribbean and the ICT in Education Toolkit for Policymakers (with UNESCO, used in 27 countries to date). Mike brings experience working in a variety of capacities with on-the-ground ICT for education initiatives in several regions, including feasibility studies, evaluation and assessment, teacher training and professional development, appropriate technologies and targeted policy advice, especially related to uses of ICTs in education and community telecentres. He joined the World Bank Group in 1997, first with the IFC, and then serving on the Education and ICT for education teams at the World Bank Institute, where he was a core member of the team that developed the World Links for Development Program.