Nitin Rao is an alumnus of the National Institute of Technology - Karnataka - Surathkal, (2008) and the StartingBloc Fellowship (London Business School, 2007). He has deferred an MBA admit at the MIT Sloan School of Management to join the business development team at SKS Microfinance in Hyderabad, India.

Nitin's interests lie at the intersection of economics, business and development. He is passionate about education for low-income communities. He has been involved in strategy for The Spark Group, an MIT/Yale education startup. He has written papers on sustainable investments in Indian education accepted by MIT International Review and the Harvard Project for Asian & International Relations Harvard On-Campus Conference, and been recently selected to participate in the 38th St. Gallen Symposium in Switzerland.

Nitin recently founded Engineers for Social Impact, a unique fellowship program to connect top engineering talent to the most credible social enterprises that drive market-based solutions to development. He is the founder of the innovative Let Me Know blog for youth opportunities in India.

Francisco is a Research Analyst for the New Ventures Project and co-managing Editor for NextBillion.net. After receiving a degree in industrial engineering from Universidad de los Andes and working for an investment banking firm, he joined StratCo Consultores in Bogotá, where he worked for almost four years in management and strategy consulting.

Francisco´s interest in the intersection between business and development led him to start and manage a microfinance program in Bogotá and engage in various socially minded projects while working for StratCo. 

He can be contacted at fnoguera@wri.org and his recent bookmarks  can be viewed here.

• Base of the Pyramid
  
• Microfinance
  
• Sustainability
  
• Appropriate Technology
  
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Manuel Bueno is a staff writer for NextBillion.net. He has been employed until recently as a Financial Services Strategy Consultant at the Deloitte office in Madrid. He has two years of experience in strategy and transactions. After receiving a BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics, he worked at a microfinance institution in India and at Procter & Gamble. Manuel has always had a keen interest in business models in developing countries and is now in the process of writing a book about the Latin American Base of the Pyramid with Drs. Juan Luis Martinez and Maria Carbonell of Instituto de Empresa Business School.
Manuel will start an MPhil in Business at Tilburg University next August, where he hopes to collaborate with the soon to be launched BoP Learning Lab and satisfy his craving for BoP research. He can be contacted at mbuenovera@gmail.com

Derek is a doctoral student of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania.  He was formerly a Managing Editor for NextBillion.net and a Research Analyst with the New Ventures team where he studied the impact of small- and medium- sized-enterprises (SMEs) on environmental and social conditions in emerging economies. Derek is most interested in observing trajectories of sustainable growth in a world where the supposed divide between global/local interrelationships is being increasingly transgressed.

Derek holds a B.A. in International Affairs from George Washington University where he studied International Development and Socio-cultural Anthropology.

Derek can be reached at derekn@sas.upenn.edu

Entrepreneurship / power structures in the global marketplace / the "Green-BoP" nexus / Latin America

My area of interest is private sector distribution models for health products and services, specifically microfranchising and direct selling.

I'm interested in how these models could mesh with existing social marketing projects, and how they could leverage financing mechanisms such as microinsurance and voucher programs. I'm also interested in the potential of telemedicine and biotechnology to expand the impact of private sector health provision.

Private sector based healthcare provision

Microfranchising

Direct selling

Social marketing

Subsidy mechanisms

Microinsurance

Telemedicine

Diagnostics, treatments, preventatives, and other medical products developed for BOP markets

Environmentally sustainable enterprise development

Abigail joins WRI as an intern working in the Markets and Enterprise Program. She is interested in exploring market-based solutions, patient capital, innovative technologies and social entrepreneurship as tools for creating sustainable and measurable impact in poverty reduction, and in the wise stewardship of natural resources.

She received a B.A. in Political Science from Yale University, where she also focused in International Development and Latin American Studies.

Prior to joining WRI, Abigail interned with Acumen Fund in NYC.

Ana has a long-held interest in international development, having observed first hand the effects of poverty and inequality in her community in Mexico. During her time as an undergraduate, she spent six months at the Commission of Natural Protected Areas in the Yucatan, Mexico, where she helped to manage and implement a small-scale microfinance development project in the Celestun National Reserve. The project trained local women in the sustainable harvest of blue crabs and provided them with the skills and training to handle the export of this product.

Immediately prior to joining WRI, Ana completed a four month internship at the Amy Biehl Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa. Ana is currently working at Chemonics International an international development consulting firm. She works managing projects in their Latin America and Caribbean Department.

She is a graduate of University of the Americas in Puebla, Mexico, and holds a BA in International Relations.