Steve Schmida is the founder of SSG Advisors and a noted international social entrepreneur. Over the last 14 years, he has worked in more than 30 countries across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America on some of world’s most challenging economic, political and social problems. Mr. Schmida established SSG Advisors in 2005 as an international advisory and project management firm dedicated to bringing companies and communities together for a better world. The company’s innovative work has been featured in a number of publications, including CNN.com and USAID’s Frontlines. Mr. Schmida co-founded Easy Seva, a Base of the Pyramid (BoP) micro-franchise enterprise that delivers wireless broadband Internet service to more than 50 rural communities by mobilizing the talent and energy of local entrepreneurs. In 2007, Easy Seva was nominated for the GSM Association’s ‘Bridging the Digital Divide’ Award.

Mr. Schmida has delivered participatory training programs on public-private alliances, corporate social responsibility, micro-enterprise and community engagement for clients including Barrick Gold Corporation, Gammon Lake, the US Agency for International Development, the US Department of State and US Army. He is a frequent speaker and panelist at international conferences. Prior to establishing SSG Advisors, Mr. Schmida served in a variety of senior management positions at international non-profits overseas. From 2002-04, he served as Regional Director for the Eurasia Foundation (EF) in Moscow, Russia. In this role, he managed a $12 million budget and more than 60 staff across 8 time zones. Mr. Schmida spear-headed the Eurasia Foundation’s establishment of the New Eurasia Foundation -a Russian-led legacy institution. While in Moscow, Mr. Schmida served as an official advisor to the Russian Duma on humanitarian and philanthropy issues. From 1999-2002, Mr. Schmida served as the Regional Director of the Eurasia Foundation in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, where he launched and scaled up EF’s operations in Central Asia. From 1995-1998, he served as Program Officer/Assistant, at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), opening NDI’s first field office in Kyrgyzstan in 1996. Mr. Schmida has volunteered as an election monitor for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in elections across the Eurasia region. Steve has published numerous articles and white papers on a wide range of topics related to globalization and international development. His writing has appeared in the Moscow Times, the Burlington Free Press and the Journal for Social Economy and Law. Fluent in Russian, Mr. Schmida holds a Master’s from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a Bachelor’s cum laude from the University of Richmond. He lives in Vermont with his wife and two children.

Tom Buck has extensive experience assisting corporate clients and governmental and non-governmental agencies in building sustainable developmental practices. With SSG, he has designed and managed a number of projects focused on developing effective corporate social responsibility strategies for multi-national corporations working in the developing world. He has helped public and private entities build public-private partnerships and alliances and has assisted USAID in developing strategic partnerships with the private sector that maximize development goals while achieving business objectives. He has served as a trainer, analyst, and researcher for the USAID’s Global Development Alliance (GDA) Office, for which he currently serves as SSG’s IQC Project Manager. He has participated in a number of Mission trainings, overseen the design of a GDA Assessment Framework, and currently is lead writer of an Extractive Industry Alliance Sector Guide. As Project Manager for SSG’s contract with the US Department of State's Global Partnership Center (now Initiative), Mr. Buck led the development of a toolkit designed to assist the Department in its effort to build public-private partnerships. He has significant experience in program design, proposal writing, budgeting, training, reporting, and monitoring and evaluation for numerous corporate and USAID-funded programs. As a program officer for the Institute for Sustainable Communities, Mr. Buck has designed localization strategies for the organization’s Russia and Macedonia offices. Mr. Buck has also helped organize and participated in several major multi-country USAID evaluations on issues ranging from the role of elections in post-conflict environments to the rise of Women's NGOs in the aftermath of civil war. Mr. Buck holds an MA from the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He is a dual US-French citizen and speaks fluent French.

Nazgul Abdrazakova has more than 10 years experience working on donor-funded projects in the US and Central Asia. She spent several years working on privatization programs funded by USAID and the World Bank, including mass privatization, accounting reform and post-privatization enterprise restructuring in Kyrgyzstan. In Kazakhstan, she served as business manager for an EU-supported climate change consultancy. Ms. Abdrazakova holds an undergraduate degree in economics and a certificate in portfolio management from the Economics Institute in Boulder, Colorado. She speaks fluent Russian, Kyrgyz and English.

Emilie Kornheiser is an experienced non-profit professional with a proven track record in researching and implementing programs at the intersection of the public, private and non-profit spheres. At SSG-Advisors, Ms. Kornheiser worked on projects with the US Department of State, USAID’s Global Development Alliance, and the Inter-American Development Bank. Her career spans the range of community development activities and research: from SME and civil society development evaluation, to training and enrichment programs for female inmates and youth-- Ms. Kornheiser has worked with vulnerable and transitional populations both locally and globally. Ms. Kornheiser holds an MA from the Department of Community Development and Applied Economics at the University of Vermont, where she specialized in multi-level statistical modeling of governance network data.

Deborah McGlauflin has provided training and technical assistance to international development organizations and donors around the world focused on helping them design and launch public-private partnerships and other strategies to significantly boost the impact and effectiveness of humanitarian relief and development efforts. She has extensive experience facilitating the creation of cross-sector partnerships on behalf of public, private for-profit and non-governmental (NGO) clients, as well as in training State Department and US Agency for International Development (USAID) personnel, NGO staff, and corporate representatives in the theory and practice of forming, sustaining and growing partnerships. Her clients include national and international NGOs, international organizations, bilateral and multilateral development agencies, foundations, and multi-national corporations. She also has extensive experience in the areas of strategic planning, fundraising and board development, which she brings to bear as needed upon strengthening the partnering capabilities of her clients. She has substantive expertise in a number of relief and development fields, including refugees and migration, combating human trafficking, women’s economic development, youth development, and solar electrification. Ms. McGlauflin’s highest degree is a Master of Arts in East Asian studies from the University of Hawaii/East West Center. She is fluent in English and professionally competent in Japanese

Darrell Owen has nearly 40 years of experience in managing information and communications technologies (ICTs) for bringing about organizational and process improvements. Throughout his career he has provided innovating leadership and a consistent orientation at introducing current technologies and leveraging them for implementing change. This focus has been on the application of the technology—assessing how technologies can best be deployed and managing that deployment toward achieving targeted improvements. For approximately 30 years Mr. Owen worked in key management positions within the U.S. Government, first at the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), and later at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). During the last seven years, through his firm Owen & Owen, he has focused his attention in the international arena with an emphasis on telecommunications, Internet, e-Commerce, and e-Government. This has been as an independent consultant working with a small number of firms doing international development work, where Mr. Owen’s role has been to design and manage the introduction of ICT-related project components for a wide-range of development projects. Mr. Owen has worked in over 20 countries where his short-term engagements have focused on supporting/enabling local institutions and individuals become directly engaged in the implementation of ICTs. Mr. Owen holds an M.S.A. in Telecommunications from George Washington University.