Susana Garcia-Robles has been pushing for more private sector engagement in international development for years.
“Sustainable development only happens when there is a demonstration effect for the private sector that makes it attractive for this sector to participate,” said Garcia-Robles, a senior investment officer at the Multilateral Investment Fund, an independent fund set up by the Inter-American Development Bank in 1993 to strengthen small businesses in Latin America and the Caribbean.
With such experience in channeling private sector gains to broad-based economic growth, Garcia-Robles sees development as “getting the tools to those who don’t have them to make progress by themselves.”