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At a
recent managers' retreat, Frannie Léautier faced
a scheduling conflict. She was slated to make a presentation
at an hour that would make her too late to see her 4-year
old son and his tap-dancing routine at a school concert.
Hurried negotiations with her management team resulted in
a creative arrangement where the agenda objectives were
met, and she was able to attend her son's show- thus meeting
both deadlines.
Léautier's
"mother" hat is one that she wears proudly. "I
don't come to work on weekends," says the Vice President
of the World Bank Institute and mother of two, insisting
that a stable home life is necessary to being effective
at work. She readily admits, however, to working from home
– hardly surprising for someone who spent the last
year in the pressure-cooker position of Director of the
Office of the President.
In that
position which, in her words, gave her a birds' eye view
of the Bank Group, and taught her important lessons about
leadership, she enhanced coordination of the President's
Office with other units throughout the organization. She
says it also made her even more sensitive to issues that
she cares most about: education, the lot of women in Africa,
science and technology for development, and youth in poor
countries.
Issues
such as those propelled her from her birth town of Moshi
(Tanzania), in the cool foothills of the Kilimanjaro mountains
down to the University of Dar es Salaam, and into her lifelong
love of teaching. Léautier's first hand experience
in how knowledge empowers people to be masters of their
destiny was gained during her time as a faculty member of
the Engineering Department of the university.
From
Dar es Salaam, Léautier moved to the U.S. to obtain
her Master of Science in Transportation, and a PhD in Infrastructure
Systems at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
She then went on to teach at the Center for Construction
Research and Education and MIT's Department of Urban Planning.
A
Decade at the World Bank
In 1992,
she joined the World Bank, first as a transport economist
in the Latin America & Caribbean and South Asia Regions,
then as a research economist in the Development Economics
Department. In 1997, she was promoted to Sector Director
for Infrastructure in South Asia.
"I
was working on a number of change initiatives within the
Bank, such as strengthening the matrix, building partnerships
with the Asian Development Bank for infrastructure delivery
in South Asia, and building cohesive global teams,"
she says. The Staff Association, among others, noticed her
people skills and awarded her a Best Manager Award.
By the
time she completed her next assignment as Director for the
Bank's Infrastructure Group (comprising the Transport, Water
and Sanitation, Urban Development, and Energy units), Léautier
was recognized as a leading expert in infrastructure strategy
formulation in developing countries. She is still an Associate
Editor for the Journal of Infrastructure Systems and maintains
membership in a number of international committees on infrastructure
development. Her leadership in these sectors also landed
her an IFC/PSI Senior Management Performance Award in 2000,
as well as a President's Award for Excellence.
"Knowledge
builds capacity and capacity building results in empowerment,"
she says. "That is why I am particularly excited about
WBI's achievements in deploying its enormous technical capabilities
to bring knowledge to the most remote and inaccessible corners
of the earth through technology and partnerships with local
institutes."
Information
& Technology at Work for the Poor
Léautier
points to the many initiatives where WBI is helping to break
ground, such as the African Virtual University that is beaming
knowledge into distant lands, dispensing ideas She speaks
of examples where technology has been directly helpful for
poverty reduction, such as women in rural Uganda using mobile
telephones to access information about child bearing, or
how journalists in developing countries become better at
reporting on economic issues, making them better watchdogs
for their societies.
"WBI
is a very nimble, entrepreneurial place; it's really fascinating,"
Léautier observes. She sees technology and partnerships,
both within the Bank Group and with donor countries and
the private sector, as a means of offering better quality
products. " I hope that WBI will also become a driver
for knowledge and learning within the Bank Group itself,
with greater internal collaboration and skills development
for staff," she says.
"Of
course, I would not be able to do this job without the kind
of family structure that I am fortunate to have," Léautier
adds. This includes her husband, an international management
consulting executive with whom she can talk shop, her six-year
old daughter who sometimes calls her at work just to chat,
and her young tap-dancing son. She admits to missing her
coffee-farming father, a popular song-writer in the pre-independence
days who was jailed by the British for composing subversive,
anti-colonial songs, and her mother, both of whom now live
in the mountain town of Lushoto in the Usambara mountains
in Tanzania.
Today,
Léautier looks back on the last 10 years as a period
of education and preparation for her position as head of
WBI. For someone who started teaching students so poor they
had no books or other vital learning aids, she sees WBI
as a real opportunity to help change the lives of the poor
around the world.
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WBI's
Frannie Léautier
