David C. Korten Biography

Dr. David C. Korten worked for more than thirty-five years in preeminent business academic and international development institutions before he turned away from the establishment to work exclusively with public interest citizen-action groups. He is the cofounder and board chair of YES! Magazine co-chair of the New Economy Working Group founder and president of the Living Economies Forum (formerly the People-Centered Development Forum) a member of the Club of Rome and a former board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies and associate of the International Forum on Globalization.
Korten earned his MBA and PhD degrees at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Trained in organization theory business strategy and economics he devoted his early career to setting up business schools in low-income countries—starting with Ethiopia—in the hope that creating a new class of professional business entrepreneurs who would be the key to ending global poverty. He completed his military service during the Vietnam War as a captain in the U.S. Air Force with duty at the Special Air Warfare School Air Force headquarters command the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Korten then served for five and a half years as a faculty member of the Harvard University Graduate School of Business where he taught in Harvard’s middle management MBA and doctoral programs and served as Harvard’s adviser to the Central American Management Institute in Nicaragua. He subsequently joined the staff of the Harvard Institute for International Development where he headed a Ford Foundation–funded project to strengthen the organization and management of national family planning programs.

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