Staff
Dr. Karl P. Sauvant - Executive Director
Dr. Karl P. Sauvant is the Executive Director of the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment; Research Scholar and Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School; Co-Director, Millennium Cities Initiative; Honorary Fellow, European International Business Academy; Chatham House Foundation Fellow; Senior Advisor to the China Council for Investment Promotion; and Member, International Advisory Council, International Center for Corporate Accountability, Baruch College, CUNY. He is also Guest Professor at Nankai University, China.
Until July 2005, Dr. Sauvant was Director of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's (UNCTAD) Division on Investment, Technology and Enterprise Development (DITE), the focal point in the UN system for matters related to foreign direct investment (FDI) and technology, as well as a major interface with the private sector. While at the UN, he created, in 1991, the prestigious annual World Investment Report, of which he was the lead author until 2004. In 1992, Dr. Sauvant founded the journal Transnational Corporations, serving as its editor until 2005. He provided intellectual leadership and guidance to a series of 25 monographs on key issues related to international investment agreements, which were published in 2004/05 in three volumes, and he edited, together with Dr. John H. Dunning, a 20-volume Library on Transnational Corporations (published by Routledge).
Dr. Sauvant joined the United Nations in 1973 and, as of 1975, has focused his work on matters related to FDI. Since 1988, he was responsible for the Organization's policy analysis work on FDI. In 2001, he became Director of DITE. His responsibilities included managing the Division; promoting international consensus-building in the areas of FDI, technology and enterprise development; providing intellectual leadership for policy-oriented research; and conceptualizing and supervising technical assistance activities in this field.
Apart from his work for the United Nations, Dr. Sauvant has published extensively on issues related to economic development, FDI and services. His name is associated with some 150 United Nations publications on FDI over the past three decades.
Dr. Sauvant received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He is a national of Germany, married to Silvana F. da Silva, a national of Brazil.
Fellows, scholar, and interns
Elizabeth C. Briones Gomez is an intern for the Vale Columbia Center. She previously conducted research on European law and politics in Brussels, was an intern at the European Commission and worked for an Italian law firm dealing with intellectual property issues and international contracts. Ms. Briones recently received a Master of Laws Degree from Columbia University, and has also pursued postgraduate studies in International Relations for Business at Boston University Brussels and an LLM specialization in Banking and Finance at University College London. Ms. Briones graduated summa cum laude from Catholic University of Peru.
Chrysilla Carissa Bautista is a Special Projects Assistant for the Vale Columbia Center. She recently received her LL.M. from Columbia University and was awarded the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for academic achievement. Prior to attending Columbia, she was a practicing lawyer and a professorial lecturer at the University of the Philippines.
Related Bodies and Faculty
The Vale Columbia Center is a joint undertaking of the Columbia Law School and The Earth Institute at Columbia University. The Center is also linked to the Center on Global Legal Problems. It is a bridge between the legal focus of Columbia Law School and the sustainable development focus of The Earth Institute.
Dr. Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director, The Earth Institute at Columbia University; Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, Columbia University; Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
Dean David M. Schizer, Dean of Columbia Law School; Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law
José E. Alvarez, Hamilton Fish Professor of International Law and Diplomacy at Columbia University Law School; Executive Director, Center on Global Legal Problems, Columbia Law School