News/Events

Speaker Series Welcomes Entrepreneurship Expert Bayrasli

Thursday, January 25, 2018

The WDI Global Impact Speaker Series will feature a professor and author who has worked with entrepreneurs around the world. She will talk about how entrepreneurship has transformed the economies of low- and middle-income countries and how these places will produce the next generation of Silicon Valley-style innovators.

Elmira Bayrasli’s talk, “Steve Jobs Lives in Pakistan: The Rise of Entrepreneurs Everywhere (and What That’s Doing to the World),” is at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 6 in room R0210 at the Ross School of Business. It is free and open to the public. A reception will follow immediately.

Bayrasli, author of From the Other Side of the World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places,” will discuss how entrepreneurship has taken hold globally. She is co-founder of Foreign Policy Interrupted and a professor at Bard College’s Global and International Affairs program.

We are really excited to offer this talk by Elmira Bayrasli,” said Amy Gillett, vice president of WDI’s Education Initiative and its Entrepreneurship Development Center. “Students will hear about her vast experience in helping startups scale up in emerging markets and benefit from her great insights into the role that entrepreneurship plays in economic development.”

Bayrasli said countries such as China, Brazil, India, Turkey and Nigeria have transformed economically over the past two decades thanks, largely, to entrepreneurship. She also will talk about what this “rise of the rest” has meant for world affairs, including the election of Donald Trump.

In addition to her teaching and writing, Bayrasli once served as chief spokesperson for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Mission while living in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. From 1994-2000, Bayrasli was a presidential appointee at the U.S. State Department, working for then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and U.S. Diplomat Richard Holbrooke.

She is a regular contributor on global entrepreneurship for the online publication TechCrunch. She also provides analysis on foreign policy, particularly on Turkey.  Her work has appeared in Reuters, Foreign Affairs, Washington Post, Fortune, Forbes, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. Bayrasli sits on several boards, including Invest2Innovate, Turkish Women’s International Network and Our Secure Future.

 

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