Spring 2008 issue of Terry Magazine - (Page 46)

ship at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, where she worked on trade and development. As a special assistant to Birdsall, Vyborny got a taste of everything that goes on at CGD. After almost a year, she moved to a program coordinator position, which allows her to develop projects and help put them into practice. Besides her donor-support scorecard, Vyborny is also tackling “progress-based aid.” In early December, CGD sent her to Senegal to meet with education officials to discuss a new approach to foreign aid: $100 per child who successfully completes primary school — no further questions asked. “You can buy books, but will they make it to the classroom?” says Vyborny. “You can train teachers, but what if they don’t come to school? Instead of micromanaging what inputs our money buys, why don’t we let the country decide how to spend its money, then measure the results that matter — how many children finished school and how much did they learn? This approach allows the country to determine what is needed — but we only pay for results.” This approach may seem a bit radical, says Vyborny, but that is precisely what she likes about working for a think tank — getting to push the limit of how to go about affecting real change. One way to do it, she says, is to “engage rich-country policy makers.” Birdsall likes to refer to her staff as “hard headed, but soft hearted” — and initial interest in the “progress-based aid” idea has been so positive that the staff is working on a handbook that can be used by international aid organizations. Following the junior staff meeting, Vyborny meets with a senior researcher at CGD who works on HIV/AIDS to explore the idea of starting a similar project to the one being discussed in Senegal — only involving HIV/AIDS instead of education. In the afternoon, she works on a chapter dealing with education for a book, edited by Birdsall, entitled The White House and the World: A Global (top photo) Because she was Development Agenda for the a Foundation Fellow at UGA, Next U.S. President. Vyborny traveled extensively as an undergrad. One of her most memorable In December, Vyborny study abroad experiences was a semesterpacked her bags for a long Mandarin immersion program in China, where she visited the Shaanxi province and stayed whirlwind 24-hour trip in a hostel room with a Buddhist nun and a Chinese to Athens, where UGA’s family on a pilgrimage. The cave art statues behind international affairs her are at the Yungang Grottoes near Datong. (bottom photo/from left) Vyborny was required to department hosted a lunconverse with her Chinese roommate Liu Juan, cheon in honor of her her American classmates, and her teachers in Chinese only. But it wasn't all work. Vyborny and the university’s other taught her roommate how to make 2007 Rhodes Scholar, Deep American pancakes, and Liu taught her how to make Chinese Shah. (UGA was one of only 46 • Spring 2008 mushroom soup. seven universities with more than one Rhodes Scholar, and the only public.) While in Athens, Vyborny talked to UGA’s Foundation Fellows about internship opportunities. She wants to help them understand “who the players are and what kind of skills you need to contribute in the policy world.” Vyborny’s UGA career included study abroad experience in China, Ecuador, and India, with shorter study periods in England, Hungary, Croatia, Costa Rica, and South Africa. And she has high praise for her Terry economics professors — Greg Trandel, Santanu Chatterjee, and Mustard. “The classes I took with them in microeconomics, public finance, international trade, and the economics of education helped to inform my understanding of the process of development,” she says. “And they’ve given me a basis for the research I have done since graduation.” When her passport isn’t being punched, Vyborny enjoys curling up in her D.C. apartment and listening to NPR. She found time to sing in the women’s glee club at UGA, and, as you might imagine, she’s an avid volunteer. She is involved with a women’s shelter in the District as well as a health outreach program, HIPS, which stands for Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive. She is on a monthly rotation as the overnight on-call person at the women’s shelter, and her HIPS duties entail spending one night a month riding in a van with an outreach team that visits areas of D.C. where prostitutes congregate. “We provide all types of support to them,” says Vyborny. “We hand out condoms and give referrals for support groups, health clinics, and shelters, and we do HIV testing right there in the van. If and when they decide they want help to transition out of sex work, we are there — but that is not the goal. We’re there because we care about them as people, and I think they know that.” Vyborny attended a private high school in her hometown of Raleigh, N.C., but there’s a hint of a British accent in her speech, owing to the eight years she spent in England, where her parents emigrated as refugees from Czechoslovakia after the Soviet invasion of Prague in 1968. The family moved to North Carolina when Vyborny’s mother, a project manager for GlaxoSmithKline, accepted a job transfer. Vyborny’s easy-going manner and ever-present smile belie the fire that burns inside her for improving economic conditions in third world countries. Asked what other career she would like to pursue besides development aid, she hesitates for only a moment before answering: “Pastry chef!” “It’s important not to take yourself too seriously,” she adds. “But we take the work we do very seriously.” ■ Terry College of BuSineSS

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Terry School of Business - Spring 2008

Terry School of Business - Spring 2008 Contents Quick Bites Research & Innovation Gatherings Best CEO in America An Unlikely Rock Star Fire & Flavor Beyond the Bench Terry Memo Economic Scorekeeper Class Notes

Terry School of Business - Spring 2008

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