New Rules, New Opportunities

Lourdes Casanova is the Gail and Roberto Cañizares Director of the Cañizares Center for Emerging Markets and a Senior Lecturer at Cornell University’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. Formerly of the strategy department at INSEAD, Dr. Casanova specializes in international business with a focus on Latin America and multinationals from emerging markets.

In 2014 and 2015, Dr. Casanova was named one of the 50 most influential Iberoamerican intellectuals by Esglobal. She is a member of the board of directors of Boyce Thompson Institute.

Dr. Casanova is a Fulbright Scholar who holds a Ph.D. from Universidad de Barcelona and an M.A. from the University of Southern California.

Anne Miroux is Faculty Fellow at the Cañizares Center for Emerging Markets in the Johnson School of Business at Cornell University. She has over 30 years of experience in international trade and finance.

Dr. Miroux began her career in the United Nations Center on Transnational Corporations in New York, where she was involved in the negotiations on the UN Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations. In the mid 1980s, she joined the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), where she specialized in issues related to debt in developing countries, foreign direct investment and transnational corporations, and technology and innovation policies. For several years, Dr. Miroux led the organization’s work on foreign direct investment (FDI) statistics and directed the World Investment Reports (WIR), the United Nations flagship report on FDI and transnational corporations. She also served as the editor of the UN Transnational Corporations Journal. Dr. Miroux published a number of papers and articles and led research projects and technical assistance activities in developing countries on debt, FDI, and development.

Until late 2015, Dr. Miroux was the Director of the Division on Technology and Logistics in UNCTAD, in charge of the organization’s work on technology and trade logistics. She was also the Head of the Secretariat of the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD). Dr. Miroux is a member of the Advisory Board of the Technology and Management Center of the Department of International Development at Oxford University as well as a member of the Board of NetExplo. Dr. Miroux has an MBA from HEC – Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (Jouy-en-Josas, France) and a diploma from IEP (Institut d’Etudes Politiques – Paris). She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from University of Paris I – Sorbonne.

Momina Aijazuddin is the Regional Financial Sector Director, MCA, at the International Finance Corporation (IFC). She is responsible for IFC’s financial institutions group program for the MCT region, which involves supervising a team of 50 covering investment, upstream, and advisory engagements with a portfolio of US$3.3 billion and annual commitments of over US$1 billion. Ms. Aijazuddin was previously responsible as the global lead for IFC’s MSME investment and advisory activities, which exceeds cumulative investments of US$6 billion worldwide with over 300 MSME-related players, in addition to advisory services worth US$63.7 million in 68 projects across 30 countries.

Ms. Aijazuddin brings over two decades of investment transaction experience in financial services, microfinance, and manufacturing sectors in over 70 countries across Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, MENA, and LAC regions. Her technical expertise includes setting up greenfield MFIs in MENA and Asia, transforming institutions to become regulated banks, and engaging with policymakers and industry players. Ms. Aijazuddin has spent the last few years heavily engaged in IFC’s financial inclusion efforts in China with leading banks and fintech players and handled key relationships with Mastercard and Ant Financial as well as leading MSME banks around the world. Her experience prior to joining IFC includes work in the banking sector. Ms. Aijazuddin holds a Master’s degree in Economics with Distinction from the London School of Economics.

Alicia García-Herrero is Adjunct Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science. She also serves as a Senior Fellow at the Brussels-based European think tank Bruegel and as Chief Economist for Asia Pacific at French investment bank NATIXIS.

Professor García-Herrero is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the East Asian Institute (EAI) of the National University Singapore (NUS) as well as at the Institute of Chinese Studies in Delhi. She is also a non-Executive Board member of listed insurance group AGEAS. In addition, Professor García-Herrero is a Member of the Council of Advisors on Economic Affairs to the Spanish government and an advisor to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s research arm (HKIMR).

Professor García-Herrero holds a Ph.D. in Economics from George Washington University and has published extensively in refereed journals and books. She is also very active in international media.

Lorenzo Pavone oversees the Emerging Markets Network (EMnet), a network of multinational companies promoting policy dialogue and analysis on business in emerging markets, hosted by the OECD Development Centre. He has experience in emerging markets, private sector development, competitiveness, investment promotion, and business climate assessment.

Mr. Pavone holds an MBA from HEC in Paris and a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Rome La Sapienza. He is a member of the Faculty Advisory Council of the Cañizares Center for Emerging Markets at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.

Veneta Andonova is Associate Professor and former Dean of the School of Management at the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. She received her Ph.D. degree in Management from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain. Dr. Andonova had been full-time faculty at top business schools in Latin America and at the American University in Bulgaria. Her interests lie at the intersection of business strategy and institutional analysis, with a focus on Latin American multinationals, non-market resources, and entrepreneurial ecosystems in emerging markets.

Dr. Andonova’s research has been published in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Development Studies, Journal of Socio-economics, Telecommunications Policy, Review of Law, and Economics, among others. A regular presenter at international conferences, Dr. Andonova’s most recent book, “Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in Unexpected Places,” was published in 2019 by Palgrave Macmillan.

Yuexing Xie is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Zhejiang University and a visiting scholar at the SC Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University. Her research focuses on institutional openness, international economics, and structural modeling. Yuexing is particularly interested in open-economy mechanisms in the context of global institutional transformation. She has published several papers in these fields in journals such as the Review of International Economics as well as many well-known Chinese journals.

Nan Li Collins is Director of the Division on Investment and Enterprise at UNCTAD and Chair of the UN Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative. She leads global efforts to advance sustainable investment, enterprise development, and the mobilization of finance for the Sustainable Development Goals, supporting more than 160 countries through research, policy dialogue, and capacity-building initiatives. Ms. Collins chairs the Governing Board of the UN Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative and leads the World Investment Forum, the UN’s largest platform for dialogue among policymakers, investors, and development actors.

Over the course of her career, Ms. Collins has held senior leadership roles across the United Nations system and the private sector. Prior to joining UNCTAD, she advanced SDG-aligned finance and public-private partnerships at UNDP across Asia, Africa, and beyond. Ms. Collins holds an MBA from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and has completed executive education programs at IESE Business School and Tsinghua University.