Author: Susan M. Blaustein3

Dr. Susan M. Blaustein is co-founder and Director of the Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI), a project of the Earth Institute at Columbia University established to assist sub-Saharan cities in their efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. Through a comprehensive combination of research, analysis, interventions and high-level advocacy, MCI identifies gaps in MDG-related areas, estimates the costs of filling those gaps and supports the Cities in designing integrated development strategies capable of accomplishing the Goals, thereby jumpstarting a period of fruitful social and economic development and making extreme poverty a thing of the past. Dr. Blaustein came to the sustainable development work of the Earth Institute out of her conflict prevention efforts with the International Crisis Group (ICG), her years as a foreign correspondent in Southeast Asia and her independent study of the roots of the Rwandan genocide. Prior to this, Dr. Blaustein was on the faculty of Columbia University, a Junior Fellow at Harvard University and a lecturer at Yale University, where she also earned her doctorate. The recipient of awards from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and the Guggenheim Foundation, Dr. Blaustein serves on the board of directors of the non-profit Millennium Promise, the lead UN partner in the Millennium Villages. She is completing a book about the Rwandan genocide and lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with her journalist husband and 15-year-old daughter.