Who We Are
James E. Austin, Ph.D., Founder and Mentor
Dr. James E. Austin, referred to by the London Financial Times as the “Harvard Business School’s guru on developing countries,” currently holds the Eliot I. Snider and Family Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School as a Professor Emeritus, where he created the Management in Developing Countries course.
For more than twenty years, his research has been dedicated to strategic management in developing and emerging economies. Dr. Austin served as the Director of Agribusiness Programs at the Central American Management Institute (INCAE). In 1980, the World Bank commissioned him to write Agroindustrial Project Analysis, a book that is still in use today.
In addition to teaching and writing, Dr. Austin has worked to strengthen management schools around the world. He is internationally recognized as a leading authority on strategic management and provides consulting services to a wide variety of clients. He is the co-chairman of Harvard’s Social Enterprise Initiative.
Kevin X. Murphy, President and Co-Founder
Kevin Murphy is a business/sectoral strategy and competitiveness expert with twenty-five years of experience in enterprise development, strategic management, competitiveness analysis, investment and trade, and related executive-level training. Mr. Murphy provides strategic management services to corporations and advises governments and donor agencies on fostering economic development and foreign investment strategies. He has directed numerous international projects focused on competitiveness, privatization, agribusiness development and enterprise development.
Mr. Murphy has authored or supervised the development of over one hundred business case studies on competitiveness, investment, and trade and strategy issues in developing countries. Mr. Murphy is also the co-author of the Manual for Action in the Private Sector (MAPS) methodology, a strategic tool for assessing constraints and opportunities for private enterprise and industry development in Africa. MAPS exercises have been implemented in over fifteen countries in Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Mr. Murphy is a graduate of Harvard Business School, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, the University of Louvain, Belgium, and the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.
C. Martin Webber, Executive Vice President and Partner
Martin Webber is a strategic management and management consulting professional with twenty-five years of experience in economic growth, enterprise development, trade and investment and agribusiness. A leader of JAA’s work in competitiveness, value chain development, public-private dialogue and institutional change, he has worked with more than 50 industry clusters and sectors, and more than 100 business associations and many public and private organizations in more than 40 countries.
A key figure in competitiveness and value chain development in countries such as Armenia, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Georgia, Guyana, Haiti, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Philippines, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Thailand, and Uganda, Mr. Webber guides and facilitates business-led initiatives and policy improvement. He has helped devise strategies to improve the quality of dialogue between the private and public sector and to improve the development of the investment and trade environment for industry clusters. He has prepared and supervised case and similar studies of many companies and organizations. Mr. Webber is a frequent advisor, speaker and writer on issues of competitiveness and business-led economic growth.
Prior to J.E. Austin Associates, Mr. Webber worked in senior positions with Louis Berger International, Inc. and Apogee Research. These were management and economic consultancies, with particular emphasis on infrastructure and related services, and economic growth. A Canadian from Montreal, residing in Washington, DC, Mr. Webber obtained an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University. Mr. Webber was the 2005 co-recipient of the first “Making a Difference Award”, presented to alumni of the Harvard Business School.
Michael Ducker
Mike Ducker is the Entrepreneur in Residence for the Global Entrepreneurship Program, part of the Egyptian Competiveness Project in Egypt, a USAID funded program . He has been supporting and working for entrepreneurs for 17 years with a focus on market development, new product development, investment strategies, and institutional development to support entrepreneurs and innovation. Mr. Ducker’s previous work includes designing a business plan for a Center of Entrepreneurship Excellence in Pakistan, managing an investment project in Egypt that helped facilitate $6 million of financing to entrepreneurs, and developed concept papers for innovation centers in Bosnia. Mr. Ducker has created training courses that showed entrepreneurs how to reach local and export markets in Armenia and Kosovo. He has presented his research on entrepreneurship and ICT development to USAID, the UN, and the greater development community. Mr. Ducker was also an ICT advisor in Kenya for 2 years and in 1998, Mike helped set up and invested into an e-learning business in China.
Before his work in development, Mr. Ducker worked in the private sector for 9 years including working as a marketing director for small entrepreneurial high tech firms in which he was able to land new sales to fortune 500 companies. Mr. Ducker started his career in accounting/financial management and was part of a management staff that turned around a distribution company from losing hundreds of thousands of dollars to profiting $1 million. He has created several training courses on entrepreneurship and ICT that he has taught internationally and in the US. He earned his MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and is a former Certified Management Accountant. Mr. Ducker reached the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro and finished 7 marathons, including the Safaricom Marathon in Kenya which is ranked by Running World Magazine as one of the top endurance marathons.
Alan Saffery
Alan Saffery is a Senior Consultant and Competitiveness Expert at JAA with a reputation for providing practical and tangible results to ministries, agencies, regional and local government, private sector associations and individual firms in the tourism, handicrafts, ICT, cashmere, meat, construction materials, apparel, packaging and transport & logistics sectors. With more than 10 years’ experience in technical assistance programs, he has worked in Mongolia, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Romania, Tanzania, and Brazil with international donors and non-profit organizations on both long and short-term assignments.
His areas of expertise include: Competitiveness and economic growth assessments; Market, sector and value chain analyses; Development of cluster strategies; Product and destination development, branding, marketing and promotion; Institutional capacity building; Training and workforce assessments; Association capacity building and strategic planning; Business development and business development service strengthening; and Project management.
He has a Master’s degree with merit in Industrial Strategy and Trade Policy from the Institute of Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester (UK) and an upper second class honors degree in Rural Resource Management from the University of Plymouth (UK). His Master’s dissertation focused on the Competitiveness of the Ukrainian Tourism Industry. Alan has undertaken a number of presentations and has several publications to his name. For his services to the Mongolian Tourism Industry, he received a medal of honor from the Government’s Ministry of Infrastructure in 2003.
Ibrahima Ba
Ibrahima Ba is a multilingual management consulting professional with a 10 year track record of economic analysis and business development success.
He led the preparation of Senegal’s first national competitiveness assessment and provided strategic advice for national public entities to engage leading constituencies from the private sector, the civil society, and academia on competitiveness and policy reform issues at national, economic sector, and value chain levels in order to identify key competitiveness challenges and formulate and implement relevant business enabling reforms and measures to monitor and increase productivity levels.
Prior to joining JAA, Mr. Ba conducted various value chain analyses, competitiveness assessments, industry and company due diligence, market studies, policy assessments, marketing plans, business plans, and export plans as an advisor to private companies, venture capitalists, investment funds, and charitable foundations active in agribusiness, agriculture, international finance, trade and international development.
Moreover, he designed and implemented capacity development programs in entrepreneurship, business management, marketing management, international marketing, competitiveness analysis, and financial management for smallholder farmers, individual agribusinesses, entrepreneurs, professional groupings, consultants, and staff members of governmental organizations.
He is a native of Senegal with fluency in French, English, and Wolof. After graduating with honors from Howard University in Washington, DC, with a major in International Business and Computer-Based Information Systems, he was selected to join American Airlines’ Elite Management Development Program.
Karen Isahakyan
Karen Isahakyan is a Project Manager at J.E. Austin. He currently backstops projects in Kosovo, Bosnia, Tanzania, Armenia, among others. He is involved in the Business Growth Initiative and is also a part of the team to develop Country Analytical Studies under the MACRO IQC.
Prior to joining JAA, Mr. Isahakyan was working as a consultant for various USAID projects in Armenia. He was a Grants Manager for the Competitive Armenian Private Sector (CAPS) project; Program Manager for the Community Tourism Development Initiative; and the M&E Officer for a multi-million dollar private sector development project.
Mr. Isahakyan was also involved in short term assignments with Nathan Associates, Booz Allen Hamilton, and the Center for European Law and Integration (CELI). At CELI he was a team leader responsible for developing the EU-Armenian Information Dissemination Strategy.
Mr. Isahakyan has an MBA from the American University of Armenia and a diploma in Radiophysics from Yerevan State University. In 2006, Mr. Isahakyan completed a negotiation training course from Mercy Corps at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Alicia Miller
Alicia Miller is a Project Manager at JAA. Her responsibilities include backstopping projects, providing assistance on proposals, recruiting, mobilizing consultants, and writing and editing reports. She recently finished conducting assessments for a Sector Assessment report for a project in Georgia and manages projects in Uganda, Senegal, Georgia, and Egypt.
While at JAA, Ms. Miller has conducted research and written reports on rural ICT use, agriculture, competitiveness, market based solutions to poverty, and entrepreneurship. She has worked on designing a challenge fund for private sector innovations in health in Sub-Saharan Africa and traveled throughout Senegal, identifying businesses that work to serve the Base of the Pyramid.
Ms. Miller graduated cum laude from The George Washington University with a B.A. in International Affairs and also studied at Sciences Politiques in Paris, France. Before joining JAA, Ms. Miller interned for Senator John McCain in his Defense and Foreign Policy office. She is fluent in French and is a cellist in the NIH Philharmonia.
Joyce Lamoreux
Joyce Lamoreux is the Human Resources Director for JAA. Mrs. Lamoreux has over thirty years of professional and administrative experience in all aspects of office management and administration, including collections, inventory management, cost control, logistics, human resources management, accounting, and general office start-up, operation and management.
Mrs. Lamoreux has been with JAA for seventeen years during which time she was the principal manager of five complete JAA office relocations including office set-up, logistics and design. She is also responsible for the coordination of all day-to-day activities of the JAA home office in Virginia . These activities include, but are not limited to, managing all accounting services, financial records, human resources, retirement and medical insurance plans, tax payments, payroll and timesheet coordination, overseas office budgets and wire transfer requests as well as the coordination of payment of all long and short-term consultants and staff.