News & Views

Johanna Mendelson Forman is a leading voice in the emerging movement of social gastronomy. She visited WDI and the University of Michigan in March to discuss how food can promote social good. She also leads the gastrodiplomacy programming for the U.S. State Department-funded project “Livelihoods Innovation through Food Entrepreneurship,” or LIFE project, implemented by a…

WDI is part of two separate grants awarded by the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition (RHSC) Innovation Fund, the organization’s flagship initiative to spur and finance promising new ideas and strategies. The coalition, which is the largest network of reproductive health organizations, aims to ensure that a range of quality reproductive health…

Note: The following post was co-written by Rebecca Baylor, Heather Esper and Yaquta Kanchwala Fatehi of WDI's Performance Measurement Initiative. It was originally published on NextBillion.net, which is managed by WDI. For many businesses and organizations, the idea of measuring their impacts is usually one of three things: scary, elusive or just…

Many organizations working with small businesses in low-income countries struggle with how to separate powerful, but anecdotal, stories from true social impact that can be replicated.   The newly released WDI Impact Report, “Positive Change Through Actionable Metrics,” reviews the work of the Institute’s Performance Measurement Initiative (PMI) while pilot-testing…

Qin Dong said the healthcare delivery course she took this semester taught her a lot about practices inside and outside the United States, including how healthcare organizations harnessed different business models to scale up and meet patient needs.But the biggest lesson for Dong from the weeks of classroom learning and…

Food can be a powerful means to a more peaceful world because it encourages conversation, cross-cultural engagement and understanding during troubled times, according to the next speaker for the WDI Global Impact Speaker Series. Johanna Mendelson Forman, a leading voice in the emerging movement of gastrodiplomacy and social gastronomy,…

WDI’s partnership with Aravind Eye Care System dates back to 1999.  Over the years, the organization has utilized a combination of student MBA teams and other engagements with the Institute to explore new ideas for growing strategically and improving operations at its hospitals and clinics, which offer world-class eye…

Note: The following interview was conducted by Ekta Jhaveri, senior research associate for the Healthcare and Financial Sector Development Initiatives at the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan. The article originally appeared on NextBillion, which is managed by WDI.  Many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries face…

A new case study authored by WDI’s Performance Measurement Initiative (PMI) that gives advice to impact investors and investees on new and emerging ways to strengthen their impact measurement practices will be released at two major, international conferences this week. The case, “Accelerating Measurement within Impact Investing: Five Critical…

WDI’s newly created Energy Initiative will examine the effectiveness of several enterprises in India that have been working to bring energy access to marginalized communities in the country for the past three years. The project, in conjunction with Miller Center at Santa Clara University and New Ventures India, will…