In the Community

MARCH 13, 2007 FROM 12:00 NOON - 2:00 PM. AT THE DOYLE CONSERVATION CENTER IN LEOMINSTER

Paul Dudley Hart, Director at Large, Mercy Corps : Addressing Poverty from a Global Perspective

In the fourth session of the speaker series for the 2006-2007 academic year, Paul Dudley Hart will discuss Mercy Corps role in fighting poverty worldwide.

Mercy Corps unified global programs reach nearly 10 million people in more than 35 countries. Paul Dudley Hart as Director-at-Large, helps lead their efforts to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities. Mercy Corps pursues this mission through emergency relief services, sustainable economic development and civil society initiatives. Mercy Corps works amid disaster, conflicts, chronic poverty and instability to unleash the potential of people who can win against nearly impossible odds.

As Mercy Corps’ Director-at-Large, Paul Dudley Hart brings 25 years of senior management experience and a highly successful track record in organizational leadership, and management. Since joining Mercy Corps’ senior management team in April 2003 Paul has been on a number of assignments both domestically and overseas including serving as Mercy Corps’ Chief of Party in Iraq during August and September of 2003 and managing the merger of mercy Corps with Conflict Management Group of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Paul also focuses on funding diversification, strategic alliances and other new agency initiatives nationally and internationally. Paul has learned through his assignments at Mercy Corps, that communities recovering from war and social upheaval must be agents of their own transformation for change to endure. It’s only when communities set their own agendas, raise their own resources and implement programs themselves, that their first successes result in the renewed hope, confidence and skills to continue development.

Paul comes to Mercy Corps most immediately from a private consulting practice where he worked with for-profit and not-for-profit clients with organizational development, social responsibility, and strategic planning services. Previously he served as President of The Brown Schools (TBS) Education Services Group. TBS is the largest provider of education, therapeutic and family support services for children with extraordinary needs in the United States. Paul's group served over 3,000 students through 800 employees in 12 programs across five states and Puerto Rico.

Before that, Paul was CEO of Pacific Crest Outward Bound School, headquartered in Portland Oregon, with operations throughout the West Coast providing exponential education programming structured to inspire self-esteem, self-reliance, concern for others and care for the environment.

Paul grew up in England but emigrated to Australia at age 17. Paul’s early career was as seaman and diver aboard a square rigged sailing ship doing underwater filming in the South West Pacific. He moved next to colder regions – Antarctica. Paul spent 10 years in the National Science Foundation’s U.S. Antarctic Research Program (USARP) and for most of that time had operational leadership responsibility for USARP’s principal ocean science operation. For six of those years, the program was operated jointly with the Argentine government and Paul was based in Buenos Aires. Over 10 years, Paul spent 90 months deployed in Antarctica. When he took time to thaw out, he managed marine and environmental survey programs in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, Vietnam, Algeria, Egypt, the UK, Mozambique and Guyana.

Paul moved next to The Woods Hold Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the world’s largest private marine research lab, where he served as Director of Development and then Director of International and Industrial Programs. Paul was a key WHOI team member responding to the opportunities and massive international public interest following the 1985 discovery of RMS Titanic.

For more information about Mercy Corps, please go to their website: www.mercycorps.org

Due to limited space, registration is required no later than Tuesday, March 6th. To register, contact Eveliz Rivera at (978) 630-9324 or via email at: whatsnext@mwcc.mass.edu. Complimentary lunch will be provided, courtesy of the Center for Democracy and Humanity at Mount Wachusett Community College.