M6 December 19, 2003
This month, Sonal Shah leaves the bipartisan Center for Global Development to join the Center for American Progress, a new liberal think tank
Humanity that works Indicorps founder Sonal Shah is an economist who looks at the big picture with an eye for the smallest detail. ARUN VENUGOPAL meets the India Abroad Person of the Year 2003 PHOTOGRAPHS: PARESH GANDHI
ONAL SHAH IS on the move. Having tackled the poverty and disease of sub-Saharan Africa, the Asian financial crisis, and the breakdown of Bosnian society, she is steeling herself for that ugliest of beasts: Washington politics. This month, she leaves the bipartisan Center for Global Development after serving for just under two years, and is set to join the Center for American Progress, the new, liberal think tank on the block. That job begins full-time in January. For now, the 35-year-old economist and founder of Indicorps is splitting her time between the two organizations that dominate her day-
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times: Monday through Wednesdays at CGD, Thursday and Friday at CAP. On this particular day, she is at the office of the Center for Global Development, which overlooks Massachusetts Avenue. It sits next to the Institute for International Economics, its sister institute, and across the street from the Brookings Institution and Council on Foreign Relations, in what amounts to an impressive cluster of Washington, DC think tanks. Sonal stands in her room, dressed in black pants and blouse, and wrapped in a gray shawl. Books and files lie scattered on the floor or in stacks on chairs. Boxes sit, opened, holding mementoes from her pre-
vious job at the Treasury Department, where she worked for several years. She joined the CGD when it was formed, and as Director of Operations and Programs, has been responsible for most of the Center’s hiring, and for managing its policy and advocacy programs. The organization conducts research on globalization and its impact on poor people throughout the world, and promotes policies it feels contribute to equitable growth. Sonal was brought in from the Treasury, where in her six years she dealt with one regional crisis after another. In 1996, in the immediate aftermath of the war in Bosnia, she served as a Treasury Attaché in Sara-
jevo. There, she worked with Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin and others to restore the local banking system, establish a new currency, and help balance the demands of various ethnic groups. Later, she became a regular fixture in Southeast Asia, helping bring the financial crisis under control even as riots swept around her. When she left the Treasury, it was as the Director of the Office of African Nations, helping negotiate debt and AIDS for sub-Saharan nations. It all sounds quite dramatic — visions of American economists parachuting into hyper-inflated territory — but of course, quite often, violence was close at hand, a