Mission: Global Poverty

Written by Melinda Ennis-Roughton Wednesday, March 31 2010

Sita Ranchod-Nilsson, director, Emory University Institute for Developing Nations

When Sita Ranchod-Nilsson arrived in Atlanta in December 2006, she took on the world – or at least one of its most critical issues: global poverty.

Despite two millennia of mankind’s advances, many developing nations continue to be plagued by a cycle of poverty that seems invincible. But for the last three and a half years, Ranchod-Nilsson has worked to change that. As head of Emory University’s Institute for Developing Nations (IDN), she has sought practical solutions to eradicate poverty by building multidisciplinary networks in the academic, corporate, government, and philanthropic worlds.

In collaboration with Atlanta’s Carter Center, Ranchod-Nilsson and her small IDN team face an enormous challenge. But the knowledge, excitement, and practices she has brought to the task are creating viable solutions.

“We must go beyond Emory University’s academic environment and research,” says Ranchod-Nilsson, who adds that practical solutions can only be accomplished with the support of a variety of resources, including legal, sociological, and local in-community connections.

As a former professor, Ranchod-Nilsson understands the importance of the academic research needed for the work’s foundation. “But people can sit in a library for years and become experts in developmental theory without even visiting the countries they are studying,” she says.

That is not the case with Ranchod-Nilsson who began her professional life in the troubled nation of Zimbabwe.

Ranchod-Nilsson earned her Ph.D. in the 1980s working in the field on a thesis entitled “Gender Struggle for the Nation: Rural African Women's Involvement in the Liberation of Zimbabwe.” During her time there, Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) had just gained its independence from the United Kingdom, and there was hope and excitement in the land.

Ranchod-Nilsson’s thesis studied the role of women in helping to forge the nation. Zimbabwe’s women were experiencing new freedoms in speech and actions. But the hopeful leadership that began with Robert Mugabe in 1980 has been corrupted, and today Zimbabwe’s women and men suffer from run-away inflation, government oppression, and human rights violations.

“It is completely depressing,” says Ranchod-Nilsson. “During that period in the ‘80s there was a working infrastructure, and people had started to relax and talk about a women’s agenda for change. Now they’re all clammed up again.”

Much of her background has been dedicated to the plight of women in many developing nations, helping to give a voice to their suffering. For the last 20 years, prior to joining Emory, much of Ranchod-Nilsson’s work concentrated on gender violence in sub-Saharan Africa. Her work has appeared in many international journals, and she co-edited the book Women, States, and Nationalism: At Home in the Nation?

She came to the Emory’s Institute for Developing Nations after having established and then directing the interdisciplinary International Studies Program at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. The new Emory institute had just been formed after discussions between Emory University President James Wagner and former President Jimmy Carter about the opportunities for synergy between the two institutions. Both had curriculums in the areas of health, world conflict resolution, and human rights. They launched IDN as a transformational program to connect similar efforts from a range of disciplines that were often working in silos on the very same issues.

“Not only do we want Emory anthropologists to talk to Emory women’s studies or the law school,” says Ranchod-Nilsson, “we want to work with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and within the communities.”

One of the recent programs in which IDN has participated addresses gender-based violence and rule of law in Liberia. After enduring 14 years of civil war in which more than 250,000 were killed and another 3.5 million were displaced, Liberia, a former autocratic state, is now struggling to establish new order governed by rule of law (as opposed to customary law, presided over by a village council or council head).

IDN’s work to understand the continued community practice and efficacy of customary law took Ranchod-Nilsson and a multi-disciplinary team to Bong County, Liberia. They met with several community-based organizations including the local Women’s Literary Association.

“These women feel they were having success by working hands-on with the head man or village council to make sure they are aware of new governmental laws about violence toward women,” says Ranchod-Nilsson, who cites suspicions about the legal system and the government as reasons even many women in Liberia resist taking violations to a traditional court.

But Ranchod-Nilsson’s team is there to not only research the “real” success being made, but to start victim support groups and engage Liberian men in a dialogue about gender violations. These things cannot be learned from afar. “Local knowledge matters,” says Ranchod-Nilsson.

The rewarding and important work she’s doing sometimes takes her far from the Atlanta home she shares with her husband of 25 years – the director of communications for Emory’s Laney Graduate school – and her two children, a boy 12 and 16-year-old daughter.

“We love it here,” says Ranchod-Nilsson, who says they are particularly enamored with Atlanta’s cosmopolitan diversity. She and her husband love to prowl the DeKalb World Farmer’s Market, which brings together people and food products from all over the globe – a mission not too unlike that of Ranchod-Nilsson.

(For more information visit http://www.idn.emory.edu)

A veteran of the marketing/advertising business, Melinda Ennis-Roughton is the principal and owner of an Atlanta-based marketing firm called MelWorks Inc., and a freelance writer specializing in women’s issues and film criticism. She was an on-going contributing film critic for the Atlanta Journal Constitution from 2004-2007.

Her career highlights include the position of Executive Director/Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for Brand Atlanta, which was responsible for marketing the city under Shirley Franklin’s administration. She served as Global CMO for Church's Chicken, supervising marketing direction, from China to Costa Rica. And her career also includes executive positions at Atlanta ad agencies, including Fitzgerald & Co. Ennis-Roughton began her career with Arby’s Restaurants, where she stayed for ten years, eventually rising to the position of senior vice president, marketing and was the first female vice president of the organization.