Opening remarks  

Manfred Profazi

Manfred Profazi is the Senior Regional Advisor for Europe and Central Asia in the Office of the Director General at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland since September 2017. 

Before his current assignment, Mr. Profazi was the Chief of Mission of the IOM Mission in Ukraine from 2010 to 2017. Previous to that, he served as the Executive Officer and in other functions at IOM Indonesia between 2006 and 2009. Prior to that, Mr. Profazi worked for 3 years as a Programme Manager for IOM in Kabul, Afghanistan. 

Before that, he was the Head of Office and Operations Coordinator of IOM’s Liaison Office in Berlin, Germany. He started his career with IOM as a consultant and later research assistant at the IOM Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. 

Prior to joining IOM in 1997, Mr. Profazi worked as a consultant at the German Institute for Economic Research (Deutsches Institut fuer Wirtschaftsforschung, DIW) in Berlin, Germany and at the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) in Vienna, Austria. 

A German National, he received his master's degree in Political Science, with an emphasis on Migration and International Relations at the Free University of Berlin, Germany. He has conducted research on international labour migration, migration potentials, migration history and theories.   

Moderator

Eric Guichard

Mr. Eric Guichard is founder & CEO of Homestrings, Inc., a Diaspora investment advisory platform. Homestrings advises public, private and multilateral organizations on how to mobilize diaspora capital for investment into public and private projects.

Prior to Homestrings Eric was Founder and Chairman of GRAVITAS Capital, an institutional asset management company he created in 1996. Before his entrepreneurial stint, Eric was Portfolio Manager at the World Bank where he also served as technical adviser to sovereign and multilateral institutions worldwide.

Eric is a graduate of the University of Dakar, in Senegal; of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh; and of the Harvard Business School, where he earned his MBA (World Bank Scholar and Harvard Fellowship award.)

He serves on several non-profit boards, including: The African Development Bank’s Steering Committee on Diaspora Investments; The International Organization on Migration Advisory Board on Diaspora Investments; the University of Maryland's Center for Financial Policy – an academic think tank on policy reform; and RemitFund, a Diaspora philanthropy platform. He also serves on a for-profit boards, including Ovamba Solutions.

In 2013 Eric received the "Entrepreneur of the Year Award" from London-based African Diaspora Awards for successfully launching Homestrings.com. In 2014, Homestrings Ltd received the "African Financier of the Year" Award from the Association of African-Owned Enterprises, UK.

Eric has published research at the Asian Development Bank: “Bangladesh Diaspora Bond Feasibility Study (2016)”, and “Sri Lanka Diaspora Bond Feasibility Study (2016)” under the Bank’s Promoting Remittances for Development Finance program. He has also published in the American Diplomatic Journal “Global Migrant Remittances – A New Development Finance Paradigm? Implementation Successes, Failures and US Foreign Policy Implications” (2018).

Eric has been featured in the following media outlets: The Wall Street Journal, Forbes – Africa Magazine, CNBC, Euromoney Magazine, BBC Television, and BBC Radio, among others.

 

Speakers 

Mbemba Jabbi 

Mbemba Jabbi holds a BSc. in Development Studies, a MSc. Agri. in Rural Development and an M.A. in Management obtained in Ireland. Mbemba is the founder and Managing Director of Jabbi Group Limited, a business and management consultancy company and the Executive Director of the Africa Solidarity Centre (“Africa Centre Ireland”) all based in Ireland. He has been carrying out research on the African Diaspora and their role in the development of Africa countries for the past 10 years. Mbemba mobilised African Diaspora to inform Ireland’s new International Development Policy in 2018.

He has been evaluating programme activities of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and facilitating dialogue between the private and non-profit sectors in Ireland on how they can work together in eradicating global poverty. Mbemba also serves on the African Union Commission’s Joint Labour Migration Committee. 

Mbemba is a Global Goodwill Ambassador on Humanitarian work related to the Sustainable Development Goals and was a recipient of the International Diversity Leadership award 2018. 

Jorge Zavala 

Jorge Zavala is an Electrical Engineer transformed into a Mathematician that evolved into a business developer engaged in venture backed high-tech startups. Jorge is very involved in new product and talent development focused in new ventures and highly innovative technology companies.  

With more than 16 years living in the Silicon Valley, Jorge has collected experience in consulting and facilitating with over 700 workshops and seminars with international companies looking how to build innovative and scalable new products.  

Workshops like “The Minimum Viable Mindset”, product development, enhance technical and management skills for executives, university academics and students from Mexico and Latin America to get feedback and capitalize lessons learned from the professionals who attended bootcamps in Silicon Valley as well market validation, growth hacking, go to market strategies and how to fund and scale companies using venture funds and large market opportunities.  

In 2020 launched a live conversation interviews over Facebook Live, conducting more than 350 interviews to people about how to Reinvent the Reinvention during the pandemic developing a unique style to help people to explore how to imagine a structured way to take action and develop new ventures as a person, as a professional person, as a community member(s) or in business endeavors. 

In 2012, published the book: “Think Like Silicon Valley been anywhere”. In 2013 published in Spanish the book co-authored with 13 other authors the book “Mas allá del Business Plan” – Beyond the Business Plan”.

In 2005, funded the “Red Global de Mexicanos” network of the Mexican Diaspora with more than 65 chapters around the world. Since 2015, as a part time professor, Jorge teaches in the Universidad Panamericana located in Guadalajara, Mexico the course to develop innovative projects in the Innovation Master Degree. 

A business writer of the weekly column “InnovArte” in the Mural newspaper from Guadalajara, Jalisco. 

Liza Gashi

Liza Gashi is an executive leader, innovator, and entrepreneur with global experience in policy, research, and engagement of multi-stakeholders in governance, development, migration, and diplomacy. Liza is a former Incumbent Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora in Kosovo during Kurti Government 2020; founder and former executive director of GERMIN, a non-governmental organization that uses technology and virtual channels to connect and engage Diaspora in advancing the development and democratization of their home countries. Co-founder and former managing director of KosovoDiaspora.org, a crowdsourcing digital engagement and diplomacy platform that connects Kosovars to the world, and the world with Kosovars. Founder and chairwoman of UWC Kosova, a National Committee of Kosovo for United World Colleges (UWC), a global education movement that makes education a force to unite people, nations, and cultures for peace and a sustainable future.

Liza completed a Master of Public Administration (MPA) at Arizona State University and holds a bachelor's degree from Wartburg College (IA) in International Relations, Political Science, and Spanish Language and Literature. She is also a proud alumna of United World College in Costa Rica and the National University of Córdoba in Argentina. 

Odile Robert

Odile Robert is currently Deputy Head of the Global Programme Migration and Development at the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation at the Headquarters in Bern. She has been working at the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs for 10 years. She was a human rights advisor at the Swiss Mission to the OSCE and the UN in Vienna and a political officer in the Task Force for the 2014 Swiss OSCE Chairmanship. In 2015, she joined the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in charge of programmes for the Horn of Africa. Prior to that, Odile Robert worked for eight years in various positions at the Headquarters and in the field for the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Odile Robert holds a Master degree in international relations from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

Everlyn Anyal Musa – Oito

Everlyn Anyal Musa – Oito is a strategic program manager with focus on individual and organizational capacity building to advance inclusion. She currently manages the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program (CADFP) that has supported 528 African-born diaspora scholars to 168 universities in Africa (2013 – to date) for mutual collaboration on research, curriculum development and graduate students teaching and mentorship. This is with the aim of strengthening the capacity of African institutions to train learners with skills and knowledge relevant for current and future workplace and societal needs. Everlyn has participated in establishing a model for systematically mobilizing academic diaspora to play their role in the revitalization of African higher education matched with data base consisting of among others the scholars and their hosts, institutions, program alumni and evaluations etc. that is providing patterns for learning and decision making purpose. Before that, from 2004, Everlyn led the Kenya team of the Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program (IFP) to identify, reach, select and mentor scholars from marginalized backgrounds for change leadership in their communities and professions resulting in institutional and community transformations. Focusing on higher education and leadership development as pathway to inclusion, IFP enabled more than 4,300 social justice leaders in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Russia to pursue graduate-level studies at the world’s top universities. In 2015, Everlyn played a similar role for the Catholic Scholarship Program (CSP) with focus on the same target group, learners from less privileged backgrounds who have commitment to their communities. She has contributed to book chapters on inclusion including in International Scholarships in Higher Education: Pathways to Social Change. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 edited by Dassin, Joan, with Robin Marsh and Matt Mawer. She holds a BA in Literature and Linguistics from Kenyatta University and an MBA, Strategic Management from the University of Nairobi.

Closing remarks  

Dr. Raj Bardouille 

Raj Bardouille holds a PhD degree in Economics (with labour and employment focus). She has well over 32 years of work experience in teaching and research in universities in the Caribbean and Africa regions and as senior economist in the United Nations system organizations, including in the field and at headquarters in New York. Her professional experience covers a wide range of socio-economic development issues and challenges in the Caribbean and Africa regions, including, among others, poverty reduction and sustainable development, labour and employment policies, financing development through private and international resource mobilization, gender and development, small and medium enterprise development, migration and development. 

Since leaving active service, Dr. Bardouille has continued her research on the nexus between migration and development. This she has pursued as an independent consultant, researcher, and also as an External Research Affiliate at York University’s Centre for Refugee Studies in Toronto, Canada ; and as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for African Development, Cornell University in New York State. Currently she is exploring the possibility of undertaking research on engaging the Caribbean Diaspora in the development of their countries of origin. Dr. Bardouille has a number of publications to her credit.