The statistics are grim. Ten million children die every year from disease. Six million of the deaths are preventable because we have the tools.
‘I didn’t have any clue before I started this work how bad the problem was,’ Sara Staats, a project leader at a leading international consulting firm, said Monday in a talk at Fairfield.
Staats, a partner at one of the world’s largest consulting firms, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), works with several global partners such as Save the Children, the World Health Organization, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.’
It may be an unusual role for a top businesswoman to take, but she said the work was consistent with the goal of BCG. ‘We believe it is important to give back to our community,’ she said. ‘We could give money, but we believe our skills will have more of an impact.’
She also works with the Global Health Initiative, which was launched by Kofi Annan at the World Economic Forum in order to encourage businesses to work in partnership with governments, UN agencies, foundations, and other international organizations to address global health challenges.’
The Gates Foundation has spent ten $10 billion dollars in the last eight years in order to contribute to global health, global development, and certain programs in the U.S.’ Business leader Warren Buffett has donated $31 billion, about 85 percent of his entire fortune, to the foundation which will significantly contribute to its future growth.
The foundation supports the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative, which funds scientific research that could lead to advances against multiple diseases.
‘Malaria has come near and dear to my heart, I have spent a lot of time working with malaria in the last couple of years,’ Staats said.’ ‘We typically think that malaria is only affecting Africa but half of the world’s population is at risk.” When Staats started working with the disease there was only one drug in circulation and people were starting to adapt to it, thus negating its affects.
When BCG began researching the market for malaria prevention it found that it would be facing very heavy costs in researching, developing, and transporting the new products.’
In order to gain more support, the Gates Foundation released a statement that it would work toward eradication.’ Eradication is the goal to one day reach the point when no human being has malaria and no mosquito on the planet is carrying the disease.
‘Mosquitoes don’t know country borders so you have to call for eradication to get the whole world behind it,’ Staats said.
The event was organized by English Professor Gita Rajan, with the co-sponsorship of the School of Business, The Center for Faith ‘amp; Public Life and Women’s Studies. Prof. Cathy Giapponi from Dolan School of Business also played a major role in helping to organize the event.’ ‘ ‘
Staats attended Georgetown University as an undergraduate studying economics and math.’ She had only been out of the country once, to Mexico when she was ten, before studying abroad in Sydney, Australia as an undergraduate.’
‘What was interesting to me was the culture shock because I hadn’t expected it, it was eye-opening,’ she said referring to Sydney.’
Staats went into investment banking out of college but after realizing it wasn’t for her received an M.B.A. from Harvard University, concentrating in consulting.’ ‘Harvard Business School was the best gift I ever gave myself,’ she said.
She became employed with the Boston Consulting Group shortly thereafter; ‘I love my work, it’s so much fun to work at an international firm,’ she said.
The overall consensus from the audience was very positive.’ Several people asked Staats questions when she had completed her lecture and many stayed after to personally speak with her.
‘I thought she was really well spoken.’ She passionately spoke about how she wants to increase awareness with malaria and how awareness is important in disease prevention,’ Craig Bradley Gibson Jr. ’09 said.
Jon Grant ’09 also was supportive, ‘I thought it was pretty good, informative.’ I think that it’s fairly important for the world.’ Also it costs a lot of money, I didn’t realize that.’
Staats said that there is a lot of risk doing business in this type of market because there is always the chance someone won’t pay the company back.
‘We bring a different mindset [to the market],’ Stats said, ‘it’s all about the rigor, what makes company’s tick, and how to go about it.’
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