Press Release: Legatum Center Announces Inaugural Class of Fellows
Sep 27, 2008 
Tags: LCDE
MIT Legatum Center Announces Inaugural Class of Legatum Fellows
Entrepreneurs Aim to Scale Up Enterprise Solutions in Developing Markets
May 20, 2008: Cambridge, MA: The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) today announced that it has selected its first
class of Legatum Fellows for the 2008-2009 academic year.
“The Legatum Fellowships bring extraordinary men and women to MIT to pursue enterprise
solutions to some of the most difficult challenges facing low-income countries,” noted Iqbal Z.
Quadir, Director of the MIT Legatum Center. “By empowering entrepreneurs, the business plans
created by Legatum Fellows will serve to catalyze organic, bottom-up development.”
The twelve students who form the inaugural class hail from across the globe, from Rwanda and
Nigeria to Colombia and the United States. Their projects cover a range of endeavors, from
generating clean, low-cost energy and increasing market access to food producers to developing
mobile medical diagnostic devices and water treatment solutions.
Founded in September 2007, the MIT Legatum Center serves as a launching pad for a new
generation of entrepreneurs who want to develop the technologies and skills necessary to launch
innovative businesses in developing markets. The competitive Fellowship is aimed at incoming
and current MIT graduate students; and provides funding and exclusive opportunities to engage
with world-renowned entrepreneurs, thought-leaders and investors. The application for the 2009-
2010 Legatum Fellowship will be posted online in September.
For more information about Legatum Center activities: http://legatum.mit.edu.
The 2008-2009 Legatum Fellows:
Amy Banzaert, a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering and Design, is developing an
alternative form of charcoal—made from sugar cane waste products—that can provide
affordable clean cooking fuel in underserved regions.
Robin Bartling’s previous work in Indonesia employed market-based solutions to promote
micro-insurance policies for micro-borrowers. He is focused on building a business that provides
small and medium producers from lesser-developed countries access to the US market.
Derek Brine is pursuing dual master’s degrees in City Planning, at the School of Architecture
and Planning, and in Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is interested in incubating
innovations in Kenya that help local enterprises to catalyze deeper social-structural change.
Craig Doescher will examine ways to leverage supply chain management and micro-distribution
strategies that enhance the efficiency and operations of local shop-owners. Previously, he helped
launch, a Honduran company that manufactures toys for Western markets—providing
opportunities for local woodcutters and tradespeople.
Nicola “Niki” Gomez will explore two enterprise solutions with a focus on promoting
sustainability in her native Sri Lanka: increasing the recycling of technology products in low-
income countries and investigating the viability of a cultural organization that promotes art and
artists in South Asia.
Murali Govindaswamy developed the WiMAX Common Software Platform while an engineer
at Ericsson. He aspires to bring WiMAX-based internet connectivity throughout rural India and,
in so doing, to increase access to education, medical care, improved agricultural techniques,
cottage industry markets and e-governance in rural communities.
Nada Hashmi, a PhD candidate at the Sloan School of Management Technology Innovation
Entrepreneurship Program, plans to develop remote diagnosis technologies to assist city hospitals
in communicating with rural village clinics in the Middle East.
Ravi Inukonda, a former Senior Program Manager at Microsoft who will be earning his MBA
degree at the Sloan School of Management, plans to build an IT infrastructure based on mobile
phone usage in India that will foster growth of small businesses.
Jean Pierre “John Peter” Nshimyimana’s previous work includes a cholera awareness
campaign and multiple sanitation and water quality activities in Rwanda. Upon completing the
Legatum Fellowship, he plans to return to Rwanda to start a company that provides engineering
solutions to a range of water-related problems.
Natalia Maya Ortiz plans to spend her Legatum Fellowship focusing on ways that Information
and Communications Technologies can increase agricultural production and expand access to
markets in Colombia.
Adnan Shahid is a Sloan Fellow in the Master of Science in Management Technology in the
Innovation and Global Leadership Program at the Sloan School of Management. He is focused
on creating a technical incubation center for mobile technologies in Pakistan that will advance
commercially viable enterprises.
Oladapo Tomori received his medical degree from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and
completed graduate residency training in psychiatry at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
As a Legatum Fellow, Oladapo plans to leverage mobile technologies to enhance healthcare
monitoring, diagnosis and drug delivery in Nigeria.
The MIT Legatum Center
The MIT Legatum Center is overseen by an Executive Committee, which includes MIT
Chancellor Phillip L. Clay; Charles L. Cooney, the Robert T. Haslam (1911) Professor of
Chemical Engineering at MIT; Bengt Holmstrom, the Paul A. Samuelson Professor of
Economics at MIT; Iqbal Z. Quadir, Director of the MIT Legatum Center; and Antoinette
Schoar, the Michael M. Koerner Associate Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance at the MIT
Sloan School of Management.
The MIT Legatum Center is led by Iqbal Z. Quadir, Director, who formerly founded
GrameenPhone in Bangladesh and taught at Harvard University before joining MIT in 2005.
Michael F. Maltese, previously a Visiting Scholar and Lecturer at MIT, is the Center’s Managing
Director. Anna Omura is the Center’s Operations Manager.
About MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- a coeducational, privately endowed research
university -- is dedicated to advancing knowledge and educating students in science, technology,
and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
The Institute has more than 900 faculty and 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students. It is
organized into five Schools -- Architecture and Urban Planning; Engineering; Humanities, Arts,
and Social Sciences; Sloan School of Management; and Science. The website is located at
http://www.mit.edu.
About Legatum
Legatum is a private, international investment organisation whose mission is to promote
excellence in both global investment and sustainable development. Based in Dubai, with an
office in London, Legatum is composed of four divisions: Legatum Capital, Legatum Global
Development (“LGD”), the Legatum Institute, and the Legatum Center for Development and
Entrepreneurship at MIT (“LCDE”).
Legatum Capital is a long-term, value-oriented portfolio investor with a special emphasis on
global emerging markets. With over twenty years of experience investing proprietary capital,
Legatum provides capital to companies and governments across the globe in various industry
sectors. The website is located at http://www.legatum.com.
Legatum Global Development promotes global prosperity by applying market-based solutions to
long-term development problems. The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship
(“LCDE”) is part of LGD and is collaboration between Legatum and the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (“MIT”) to promote business development and entrepreneurship in the
developing world. The website is located at http://www.legatum.org.
The Legatum Institute (“the Institute”) is an independent policy, advocacy and advisory
organization, whose mission is to research and promote the principles that drive the creation of
global prosperity and the expansion of human liberty. The Institute undertakes original and
collaborative research, and publishes case studies and ancillary literature, including the Legatum
Prosperity Index. Please visit the website of the Legatum Institute at http://www.li.com; and of
the Prosperity Index at http://www.prosperity.com.
MEDIA CONTACTS
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Hamish Banks
Legatum
Telephone: +971 4317 5800
Email: hamish.banks@legatum.com
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Brunswick Group
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