Iqbal Z. Quadir, Professor of the Practice of Development and Entrepreneurship, MIT and Founder and Director, The Legatum Center, MIT
Joseph R. Baczko, Dean, Lubin School of Business, Pace University
Bruce Bachenheimer Clinical Professor of Management and Executive Director of Entrepreneurship@Lubin

Iqbal Z. Quadir, Professor of the Practice of Development and Entrepreneurship, MIT and Founder and Director, The Legatum Center, MIT
 

Professor Iqbal Z. Quadir is the founder and director of the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT. In the 1990s, Quadir founded GrameenPhone, which provides effective telephone access throughout Bangladesh.

Quadir is an accomplished entrepreneur who writes about the critical roles of entrepreneurship and innovations in improving the economic and political conditions in low-income countries. Quadir is often credited as having been the earliest observer of the potential for mobile phones to transform low-income countries. His work has been recognized by leaders and organizations worldwide as a new and successful approach to sustainable poverty alleviation.

For four years, Quadir taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, focusing on the impact of technologies in the politics and economics of developing countries. In 2005, he moved to MIT. His particular research interest is in the democratizing effects of technologies in developing countries with some of his initial thoughts published in the Summer/Fall 2002 issue of The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs.

In 2006, Quadir co-founded the journal Innovations, published by MIT Press, which highlights private efforts in public service. Quadir spent most of the 1990s founding and building GrameenPhone Ltd., which has now become Bangladesh's largest telephone company, with net income of $250 million in 2006. His childhood exposure to the conditions in rural Bangladesh combined with his later venture capital experience in New York led Quadir to recognize that the ensuing digital revolution could facilitate the introduction of telephony to 100 million people living in rural Bangladesh. In 1994, he formally launched this effort by convincing angel investors to establish a New York based company, Gonofone Development Corp (meaning "phones for the masses") to help him organize what subsequently became known as GrameenPhone.

Quadir's vision of a large-scale, commercial project that could serve all urban areas and 68,000 villages in Bangladesh led him to organize a global consortium including Telenor AS, the primary telephone company in Norway and an affiliate of micro-credit pioneer Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. He attracted these investors by complementing his vision with a practical distribution scheme whereby small entrepreneurs, backed by loans from Grameen Bank, could retail telephone services to their surrounding communities. With the support of these investors, GrameenPhone, established in late 1996, started building a new cellular network and providing services to the public soon thereafter. To date, it has built the largest cellular network in the country with investments of nearly $2 billion and a subscriber base of nearly 20 million. Its rural program is already available in more than 60,000 villages, providing telephone access to more than 100 million people, while helping to create 250,000 micro-entrepreneurs in these villages.

Quadir appeared on CBC, CNN and PBS and was profiled in feature articles in The Economist, Boston Globe, Financial Times and The New York Times, and in several books. The World Economic Forum, based in Geneva, Switzerland, selected him as a "Global Leader for Tomorrow." In 2006, Quadir was awarded the prestigious Science, Education and Economic Development (SEED) award in Bangladesh. In spring 2007, Wharton Alumni Magazine selected Quadir for its list of 125 Influential People and Ideas on the occasion of the 125-year celebration of the Wharton School. His work is referred to in 20 books and is prominently featured in the 2007 book, You Can Hear Me Now, by Nicholas Sullivan (Jossey-Bass).

Earlier in his career, Quadir served as a vice president of Atrium Capital Corp., an associate of Security Pacific Merchant Bank, both in New York, and a consultant to the World Bank in Washington DC. He received an MBA and an MA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and a BS with honors from Swarthmore College.


Joseph R. Baczko, Dean, Lubin School of Business, Pace University
 

Mr. Baczko has held senior management and leadership positions with a number of very dynamic, high growth public companies operating domestically, as well as in the international sector. In each of these positions, he has guided these organizations in attaining market share leadership in their respective fields and in achieving significant profitability.

Mr. Baczko is currently the Dean of the Lubin School of Business. Previously, he advised private equity firms on international acquisitions in areas of consumer services and specialty retailing. From 1997 to 2001, he was Chairman and CEO of Frank's Nursery & Crafts, a specialty retailer acquired in a leveraged buy-out which he led. After several years devoted to turn-around activities, the company reorganized under new ownership. From 1993 to 1997, Mr. Baczko was a private investor associated with the Cypress Group, LLC, a major private equity firm, and the lead investor in Frank's Nursery & Crafts. As President and COO of Blockbuster Entertainment from 1991-1993, Mr. Baczko helped lead that company to significant growth in the US and internationally, and market leadership worldwide through the expansion of company-owned operations, acquisitions and franchising. During his tenure, the company doubled its size and operated more than 3,000 stores worldwide. Mr. Baczko was the founder and President of Toys R Us-International, and led that company's successful global expansion from 1983 to 1990. He established major retail operations in Canada, France, Germany, UK, Spain, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan. The growth of Toys R Us-International became a textbook case for successful global expansion in specialty retailing. From 1979 to 1983, as CEO of Max Factor-Europe, Mr. Baczko directed that company's UK- based manufacturing and marketing operations throughout Europe, and developed a network of joint ventures in the Middle East, Africa, Japan, and South Asia. Prior to 1979, Mr. Baczko held various management positions with W.R. Grace and in merchant banking.

In addition to his business career, Mr. Baczko has had significant involvement in academia. He is currently the Dean of Pace University's Lubin School of Business. Previously, he was Chairman of the Board of Visitors for the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, a position he has held for the past nine years, and during which time he has worked closely with its Dean in enhancing the School's mission and capabilities. He has been a past member of the University's Board of Regents for eight years, the last two of which were as Vice-Chairman. Mr. Baczko was an active member of the University's Capital Campaign Steering Committee, which successfully concluded its $1 billion campaign last year, of which the School of Foreign Service raised $120 million.

Mr. Baczko is Hungarian, born in Germany, raised in France, and immigrated to the States with his family in the fifties. He graduated from the School of Foreign Service with a BSFS, and received an MBA from Harvard University. Mr. Baczko was an officer in the US Marine Corps, and served in Vietnam. He and his wife have three grown children, and reside in New York City.


Bruce Bachenheimer, Clinical Professor of Management and Executive Director of Entrepreneurship@Lubin
 

Bruce Bachenheimer is a Clinical Professor of Management, the Executive Director of Entrepreneurship@Lubin, and a Faculty Fellow of the Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Pace University. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses, primarily in the areas of entrepreneurship, management, and strategy.

Professor Bachenheimer is a member of the board of LeadAmerica and the MIT Enterprise Forum of New York City. He has served as a consultant to the New York City Department of Small Business Services and a variety of new ventures. Professor Bachenheimer has spoken on entrepreneurship at numerous conferences, including the Annual Youth Assembly at the United Nations, and the Make Mine a Million $ Business program, where he also served as a judge. Mr. Bachenheimer is a reviewer for the CASE Journal, the founding faculty advisor of the Pace Association for Collegiate Entrepreneurs, a Students In Free Enterprise Sam Walton Fellow, and the organizer of the Pace Business Plan Competition and the Pace Pitch Contest.

Professor Bachenheimer's earlier career includes having served as a Vice President of iQ Venture Partners, an Assistant Vice President of Westpac Banking Corp. and an International Banking Officer for the Bank of Tokyo. As the International Product Manager for MSI, an SBA certified 8(a) firm, he was responsible for the initial commercialization of a high-technology forensic science system. In that position, he conducted business in over twenty countries. He was also the founder of Annapolis Maritime Corp. and the Co-founder of StockCentral Australia. Other activities include having sailed his 36' boat from New England, through the Caribbean, to South America and back. Bruce also participated in the Sydney to Hobart race in 2000.

Professor Bachenheimer holds a BBA, Summa Cum Laude, from Pace University. He spent a semester at Tsukuba National University in Japan as an undergraduate and continued to study Japanese at N.Y.U. after graduating. He later received the McKinsey & Company Leadership Scholarship to pursue an MBA degree, which he earned from the Australian Graduate School of Management.