Exchange to Change January 2018 E2C January 2018 web | Page 15

a l umni Lamin O. Touray GLOB 2007-08 | Gambia Where do you work? University of the Gambia, Lecturer, Development Studies Unit. How did IOB experience affect your life/ career? My IOB experience impacted and transformed my life/ career in so many positive ways. During my studies at the IOB I learned a lot and developed so many skills which have in the first place helped me get my current teaching job at the University of the Gambia, enhanced my performance there while also opening many other career opportunities for me. The rigorous training at IOB that pushes students to think beyond not just understanding but equally to be able to make constructive criticism prepared me to work under pressure and developed critical and analytical ways of unpacking issues. One of those great things at IOB which stand out the most for me is that it provided me that rare opportunity to meet diverse and beautiful scholars from around the world – students from Peru, Palestine, Uruguay, Vietnam, Philippines, Zambia, Bangladesh, just to mention a few because the list is longer than this. This is indeed an opportunity hard to come by! If you were the director of a research fund, what is a research question that you would agree to finance? A topic I would like to see being thoroughly researched is one which I’m currently developing my PhD Proposal on – ‘Social Cohesion in Africa’s ‘New’ Cities: Case of the Diverse and Globally/Digitally Connected Neighbourhoods in the Gambia’. ‘In the Gambia, the peri-urban dynamics of the past decade and a half has been marked by a fundamental transformation of housing and subsequently the settlement landscape. From year 2000 onward, there has been an unprecedented surge in real estate housing settlements. About 10 new housing estates/neighbourhoods have been built. These new neighbourhoods/homes provided through real estate seemingly pose formidable threats to the social glue that holds Gambian society together – not least because frequent socialisations and interactions appear to be restricted but also from all indications these new neighbourhoods are home to above average Gambians’. 15 Leila Arnold GLOB - 2013-14| South-Africa Where do you work? Program Manager for Medical Supply Chain at Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI). I am currently working on a program aimed at improving access to essential medicines for pregnant women, lactating mothers, and children under 5 in Sierra Leone, part of a national Free Healthcare program. We are working to assist our government counterparts in improving the supply chain of Free Healthcare drugs and medical supplies in reaching the populations that it is intended to serve. How did IOB experience affect your life/ career? My time at IOB broadened my international experience. It gave me exposure to a multitude of different cultures and people. It also gave me the opportunity to learn more about the way global supply chains function and affect developing countries; an interest I am building on in my current role! If you were the director of a research fund, what is a research question that you would agree to finance? An issue that is relevant to my current work which I’d like to see researched; what are the key factors, that could be targeted, affecting medical supply chains ability to ensure that drugs are able to reach patients when needed and as intended, in order to improve maternal mortality rates. Sierra Leone currently has one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world, by some sources, the worst. E xchange to change J anuary 2018