Dear Friends of CEM,
One of the highlights of the last six months was creating the “Revvity Foundation CEM Access Scholarship” that will help first-generation and international students access Northeastern University's rich experiential learning opportunities. We are grateful to Revvity CEO Prahlad Singh (MBA '00 and CEM board member) for this gift. It adds to generous gifts in the past from David Nardone, Venkat & Pratima Srinivasan, Vivek & Vandana Sharma, and Edmund & Colleen DiSanto.
Another highlight was the day-long Global Sustainability Summit that explored this topic from five perspectives: India's, China's, the World Bank's. an MNC's, and an NGO's. It also included an NU faculty panel on sustainability research at the university. The high point was the keynote by Jean-Pascal Tricoire, Chairman, Schneider Electric. Over 150 students, faculty, and deans from across Northeastern attended, plus another 1,000+ online. A few days later CEM helped organize DMSB's Beyond Boundaries series on the Future of Global Business, which included a fireside chat with Devika Bulchandani, Global CEO of Ogilvy, and a panel discussion featuring faculty thought leaders and the head of global procurement at Bose Corporation.
On the research front, the Nardone Family seminar series featured four speakers, including CEM board members Venkat Srinivasan (on AI) and Fabris Perusko (on how he turned around Croatia's largest private company). CEM also co-sponsored the prestigious North East Universities Development Consortium Conference hosted at NU by Economics professor Nishith Prakash that included Nobel Laureates Esther Duflo of MIT and Michael Kremer of Harvard. The sixth issue of Insights @ CEM translated another batch of academic research on emerging markets into practitioner-friendly language, while the International Business Today podcast series again included episodes focused on emerging markets.
Our students remain at the heart of everything we do. The revamped Emerging Markets Minor is gaining in popularity among undergraduates. The Fall 2024 round of the Srinivasan Family awards attracted 13 proposals from students across Northeastern U, of which five projects in Ghana. India, Kenya, Mexico, and Nigeria were selected. The new CEM Student Associates program that engages students in CEM programs and research welcomed seven new members from a pool of 30 applicants. One of their new initiatives was organizing the Fall 2024 Emerging Markets Case Competition in which 90 students from six Northeastern colleges competed before a panel of executive judges.
Many of the above programs were supported or led by CEM Faculty Fellows. CEM Program Manager Kathryn Slomski and I are deeply grateful to our colleagues, student associates, CEM board members, deans, and benefactors for making CEM what it is today.