Building State Capability Podcast Building State Capability at Harvard University

The “Decade of Building State Capability” podcast series features interviews with practitioners who reflect on their experience using the PDIA approach and their engagement with Building State Capability over the past 10 years.

On today's episode, BSC Director Salimah Samji interviews Sampath Kumar. Sampath is presently the Health Secretary and the Development Commissioner of the government of Meghalaya in northeast India. Over a career addressing rural poverty reduction, women’s empowerment, natural resource management, early childhood education, and healthcare, he has grown deeply familiar with both the challenges of extending public services to the poor and vulnerable, and the immense potential of last mile development. Mr. Kumar has also conceptualized the innovative State Capability Enhancement Project (SCEP) as a means of strengthening state capacity, while progressively tackling complex development challenges. The SCEP framework has now been institutionalized as the Government Innovation Lab (GIL) with the Government of Meghalaya. He is Edward S. Mason Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and holds a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University.


The “Decade of Building State Capability” podcast series features interviews with practitioners who reflect on their experience using the PDIA approach and their engagement with Building State Capability over the past 10 years.

On today's episode, BSC Director Salimah Samji interviews Ricardo Hausmann. Ricardo is the founder and Director of Harvard’s Growth Lab and the Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School. Under his leadership, the Growth Lab has grown into one of the most well-regarded and influential hubs for research on economic growth and development around the world. His scholarly contributions have had a significant impact on the study and practice of development. These include the development of the Growth Diagnostics and Economic Complexity methodologies, as well as several widely used economic concepts, such as Dark Matter, Original Sin, and Self-discovery. His work has been published in some of the top journals in the world, including Science, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of International Economics, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of International Money and Finance, Economic Policy, and the Journal of Economic Growth, among many others. These publications have been cited more than 47,000 times, and their main findings have been highlighted in mass media outlets such as The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

Since launching the Growth Lab in 2006, Hausmann has served as principal investigator for more than 50 research initiatives in nearly 30 countries, including the US, informing development policy, growth strategies, and diversification agendas at the national, regional, and city levels.

Before joining Harvard University, he served as the first Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank (1994-2000), where he created the Research Department. He has served as Minister of Planning of Venezuela (1992-1993) and as a member of the Board of the Central Bank of Venezuela. He also served as Chair of the IMF-World Bank Development Committee. He was Professor of Economics at the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administracion (IESA) (1985-1991) in Caracas, where he founded the Center for Public Policy. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University.

The “Decade of Building State Capability” podcast series features interviews with practitioners who reflect on their experience using the PDIA approach and their engagement with Building State Capability over the past 10 years.

On today's episode, BSC Director Salimah Samji interviews Rebecca Trupin and Prateek Mittal.

The “Decade of Building State Capability” podcast series features interviews with practitioners who reflect on their experience using the PDIA approach and their engagement with Building State Capability over the past 10 years.

On today's episode, BSC Director Salimah Samji interviews Cara Myers. Cara is Co-founder and Director of Development and Innovation at the Mozambique School Lunch Initiative (MSLI). She is passionate about systems change to address complex problems, particularly among children and youth in Mozambique. In parallel to her work with MSLI, Cara has also held a number of other roles in the international development sector. She is currently a Program Officer for the Women's Economic Empowerment team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where her work focuses on generating data and evidence for increasing women's income and agency in sub-Saharan Africa. Previously, she has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank, specifically with the Global Poverty and Equity Practice in Mozambique and Uganda, where she contributed to the analytical work on poverty, vulnerability, and inclusive growth. She has also worked as a Research Associate for Innovations for Poverty Action in Kenya, led independent research as a Fulbright Research Fellow in Brazil, and worked on livelihood development programs for Samaritan's Purse in Mozambique. Cara holds a Master’s in Public Administration in International Development (2018) from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a B.A. in International Politics and Economics (2013) from Middlebury College.

The “Decade of Building State Capability” podcast series features interviews with practitioners who reflect on their experience using the PDIA approach and their engagement with Building State Capability over the past 10 years.

On today's episode, BSC Director Salimah Samji interviews Michael Woolcock, a co-author of the Building State Capability book. Michael Woolcock is Lead Social Development Specialist with the World Bank’s Development Research Group in Washington, D.C. His current work focuses on interactions between customary and state legal systems, conducted as part of the World Bank’s global ‘Justice for the Poor’ program (which he co-founded), and strategies for assessing complex social interventions. His most recent books are Contesting Development: Participatory Projects and Local Conflict Dynamics in Indonesia (with Patrick Barron and Rachael Diprose; Yale University Press, 2011), and History, Historians and Development Policy: A Necessary Dialogue (edited with C.A. Bayly, Vijayendra Rao and Simon Szreter; Manchester University Press, 2011). An Australian national, he has an M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Brown University. He taught previously at Harvard Kennedy School from 2000-2006, and from 2006-2009 was founding Research Director of the Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester, where he was Professor of Social Science and Development Policy.

The “Decade of Building State Capability” podcast series features interviews with practitioners who reflect on their experience using the PDIA approach and their engagement with Building State Capability over the past 10 years.

On today's episode, BSC Director Salimah Samji interviews Andrew Lawson. Andrew is an economist and public finance specialist, who has spent his career working in Developing and Transition countries, helping to improve public policies and public finance management (PFM) systems. He is Technical Director of Fiscus, UK – a consultancy and research company focused on public finance issues, and was previously the Director of the Centre for Aid and Public Expenditure (CAPE) at ODI, London. He has worked for 47 governments across Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America and has also undertaken a range of evaluations of capacity building programmes for international organisations, including the EU, the World Bank, the IMF and, more recently the Gates Foundation, for whom he led an evaluation of the application of PDIA techniques to public finance problems in Africa. This was recently published in World Development Perspectives as a joint research paper, with his colleague, Dr. Jamelia Harris. Andrew has a BA (Honours) in Economics from Cambridge University and a Master’s Degree in Development Economics from the University of East Anglia, UK. He is fluent in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese, and works regularly in these languages.