Economic Opportunity for Peace
Seven years ago, Myla Williams's job took her to a Romanian orphanage where, along with her 15-year-old son, Taylor, she played ball and taught crafts to abandoned and abused children. As the World Bank's country program coordinator for South Central Europe, she would typically spend her time in the region's capital cities. But a week in a rural village brought home the human price of poverty. "The blank look in babies' eyes and their lack of responsiveness to touch or toys were very disturbing to both of us," she recalls.
Later, Taylor pointed to a man sawing winter firewood by hand and remarked how much easier central heating or just a power saw would make his life. "Over the years Taylor had resented my long working hours, but during that walk, he told me he understood why I worked at the World Bank," she says. "Poverty has to be addressed at the systemic, countrywide level. And peace is possible only when there's economic opportunity."
That is the philosophy by which Williams has charted her professional course. Her father, a lawyer who negotiated mining contracts abroad, photographed scenes of poverty in Ethiopia and the Philippines. The images moved her, after graduating from Duke, to get a master's from Stanford in agricultural economics: "I wanted to understand why people still went hungry in the world." With a preference for the practical, she went to Tuck for her MBA and then, to get private-sector experience, did financial planning and business strategy for a Chicago-based firm for five years.
After opting for full-time motherhood during Taylor's early years, she returned to the World Bank, where she had been an intern for two summers. "What mattered most was to work for an organization making a major impact on a mission aligned with my values."
Her entry-level job was as country officer for The Gambia. Then she ran the bank's grants program and worked on corporate policy. In 1995, she spurred a sea-change in bank policy by arguing in a paper submitted to the World Bank's president that corruption is not merely a political issue but an economic development issue because it taxes the poor. In 1998, she returned to country work, this time focusing on Bulgaria, Croatia, and Romania.
In January, Williams began a new assignment as country program coordinator for Vietnam, the world's largest recipient of development aid, with 35 World Bank–financed projects and $3.7 billion in loans. She'll serve as the bridge between 100 staff members in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and another 80 in Washington, manage the $11 million budget financing their work, and collaborate with them and the Vietnamese government to develop a multiyear strategy for future work in the country. "I've never been west of the U.S., but you have to go to the very bottom of the learning curve to keep your brain agile," she jokes.
All along, she says, the pragmatic, integrative, collaborative style that she learned at Tuck has helped her view the big picture realistically and knit different people together. "Sometimes I'm the only American in the room, and I don't notice it. World Bank staff share the common purpose of fighting poverty. So you see these people as your colleagues and forget what nationality they are."
