Public policy leaders give advice and gain ideas in Wilson School program

by Jennifer Greenstein Altmann
Carol Bellamy, director of UNICEF, has decades of experience in formulating health policies for other countries, but on a recent visit to a Princeton classroom she was doing as much listening as talking.

Bellamy attended professor Varun Gauri's class on health care in developing nations as part of the Woodrow Wilson School's Practitioner-in-Residence Program.

She listened closely as graduate student Angie Stene recounted her experience working last summer for UNDP, a global development organization that is part of the United Nations. Stene was in Rwanda, where, she said, "it seemed so much more should have and could have been done with the resources on the ground, but they were frittered away."

Bellamy, who has led the United Nations Children's Fund since 1995, told Stene, "I will go back tomorrow and find out what is happening in Rwanda." She said she appreciated hearing Stene's report on activities in Africa "because we need them working better."

Then Zubair Bhatti, a native of Pakistan who has worked in public administration, suggested to Bellamy a method of using incentives to evaluate the reports produced by development workers in the field.

"His incentive idea was really interesting," Bellamy remarked later. "It's always good to hear people's perceptions. It gets me thinking."

The Practitioner-in-Residence Program, which started in the spring of 2001, brings public policy leaders to campus for up to a week. The practitioners, in addition to giving a public lecture, devote much of their visit to spending time with small groups of students in individual meetings, lunch-time career conversations, class discussions and dinner gatherings. The program is run by the Wilson School's Office of Graduate Career Services.

"Bringing distinguished practitioners to talk to students allows them to see the people they want to be up close," said Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School.

Read the full story in the Weekly Bulletin.