Donald B. Clark T'73
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"Around the world, people
are more similar than they
are different."
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Our Man in Kathmandu
Don Clark can't see the Himalayas from his desk. "I have to go onto the
veranda for the spectacular view," he explains. But better than most people,
Clark understands that Nepal's famous mountains are about more than views.
"Himalayan tourism brings in people, and the more that people mix, the greater
potential there is for harmony."
Clark is mission director of the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID) in Nepal, overseeing an annual $40 million budget for projects in community
forestry, drip irrigation, reproductive health, child survival, HIV/AIDS,
hydropower, democracy and governance, conflict resolution, human trafficking,
and counseling and healthcare for torture victims. He has been with USAID
for 32 years—ever since he graduated from Tuck in 1973—all but four of them
posted in Africa or Asia. "I thought I'd do it for five years," he remembers. "I
thought I'd get fed up with the red tape, but the satisfactions of the job more
than compensate for that."
He had already joined the Peace Corps and was headed to Burkina Faso when
he was accepted to Tuck. "I told the school that I wanted to spend two years in
Africa, and they agreed to hold a spot for me." With his Peace Corps experience
and foreign-service ambitions, Clark wasn't a typical Tuck student. "I think of
my MBA more as a degree in problem solving than in business administration.
But what is business administration other than identifying a problem, coming
up with alternate strategies, and then choosing among them?"
While his business skills come in handy—developing Nepali coffee for a
high-priced niche at Starbucks, for example—the majority of his work concerns
healthcare. Since the Maoist uprising in 1996, Clark's job has become more
difficult. As he says diplomatically, "The space for development in the middle of
a conflict is constrained." But in spite of the insurgents' anti-U.S. leanings, one
project Clark is particularly proud of has continued uninterrupted: delivering
vitamin A to children to compensate for a lack of leafy green vegetables in their
diets. Clark estimates the program—a collaboration of USAID, Unicef, and
other donors—saves the lives of 12,000 to 15,000 children every year. "The
communities say to the rebels 'you can't touch this program,' and the Nepali
female community health volunteers pass unharmed through the conflict."
Clark says that success in the foreign service depends on an ability to adjust
to different cultures and to learn languages (he has learned Nepali, Tunisian
Arabic, Sinhalese, Burkina Faso's native MoorŽ and Gourmanche, and French).
"For me, the training ground was the Peace Corps: living in a hut and roughing
it. I learned not only what the world was like but who I was and what I wanted
to do with my life. It's a different mindset. You have to have a genuine fascination,
a curiosity about other cultures.
"Around the world, people are more similar than they are different. Parents
everywhere want their children to survive and to go to school. But it's interesting
to me to eat new foods, to smell new smells, to learn how people celebrate.
Since way back, I've been intrigued by what is different."
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