Team
The GIM Initiative is part of the UNDP Private Sector Division headed by the Director Henry Jackelen. The Division also hosts the Business Call to Action (BCtA), a global initiative that challenges private sector companies to adapt their core business models in support of poverty eradication and growth in developing countries, and the Inclusive Markets Development (IMD) programme, which seeks to promote inclusive market policies and projects globally.
Manager: Sahba Sobhani is the lead author of the first GIM report, “Creating Value for All: Strategies for Doing Business with the Poor”. Previously, he managed two key private sector initiatives in the executive office of the former Administrator of UNDP, Lord Malloch Brown, including the Commission on the Private Sector and Development headed by Paul Martin, the former Prime Minister of Canada, and Ernesto Zedillo, Mexico’s former President, and the African Financial Markets Initiative. In this capacity, he was the co-author of “Unleashing Entrepreneurship” Report, the seminal report of the Private Sector Commission produced at the request of then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the managing editor of the African Stock Markets Handbook. Sahba Sobhani has also worked in the private sector at Idealab in Palo Alto and Newscom Limited in Singapore. He is a graduate of Yale University.
Programme and Research Associate: As member of the GIM core team since January 2007, Austine participated in the development of over 100 case studies, was part of the writing team of the two GIM reports –“Creating Value for All: Strategies for Doing Business with the Poor” and “The MDGs: Everyone’s Business” – and acted as technical advisor for the first GIM national report in Colombia. Austine has co-authored the GIM case study “PETSTAR: Adding Value to the Recycling Chain while Improving the Scavengers’ Working Conditions” in Mexico (2008), an article on “The Poverty and Environment Nexus: A Business Opportunity?” published in The Environment and Poverty Times (2009), and a paper on “Understanding the markets of the poor: a market system approach to inclusive business models” published in Kandachar and Halme, Sustainability Challenges and Solutions at the Base of the Pyramid (Greenleaf Publishing, 2008). Previously, Austine has interned with the French Development Agency in Paris and NATO in Brussels. A native of France, Austine holds a Master’s degree in Political Science from Sciences Po Bordeaux. She is fluent in English, French and Spanish, and proficient in Portuguese.
Lead Business Research Advisor Consultant: Suba is a co-author of the GIM publication “The MDGs: Everyone’s Business“ and of the GIM/NAF paper, “A Third Way for Official Development Assistance“. Before joining GIM in April 2008, Suba Sivakumaran was the Country Director of Room to Read Sri Lanka, a non-profit working in education in the tsunami and conflict zones of the country. Prior to that, Suba was a credit research analyst with the investment bank Morgan Stanley in London covering energy and commodities. Suba holds a degree in Government and Economics from the London School of Economics and a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University.