News & Views

A kid-friendly mobile app giving children the power to participate in research studies to improve their health won first place at the inaugural Ann Arbor Health Hackathon: Prototyping Disease Prevention, co-sponsored WDI. The round-the-clock event, held June 24-26 on the University of Michigan campus, drew 91 participants who formed 18…

For Meghan Sheehan, having “a beginner’s mindset – to assume you know nothing,” was a great way to approach a complex problem in a far different culture and economic context than her own. Sheehan and fellow MBA students applied that perspective, a defining principle of design thinking, when they embarked…

A new report co-written by WDI’s Scaling Impact Initiative that investigates Walmart’s efforts to incorporate small producers into its global supply chain was presented today at the 7th Annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2016. The summit, held in Silicon Valley, Calif., is one of the foremost gatherings of the world’s preeminent…

Amy Gillett is vice president of education at the William Davidson Institute. Her article was originally published on the WDI affiliated site, NextBillion, on June 9, 2016. To read more her recent trip to Cuba and the potential for economic development there, please click here. Ernesto and Yudiel operate a…

A supply chain is only as effective as the last mile. That’s why an adequate and reliable flow of funding all the way to the point of care, also known as the “last mile,” is vital to an effective immunization supply chain. A new WDI policy paper examines how financial…

In a first for WDI, two managers visited Cuba last month to assess how the Institute could assist the country’s burgeoning entrepreneur community. Amy Gillett, vice president of the Education Initiative, and Diana Paez-Cook, senior program manager of the Grants Management team, were part of a 20-person delegation that traveled…

Each summer, as part of its mission to provide high-quality learning opportunities to University of Michigan students, WDI sponsors interns who work overseas with international organizations. This year, five U-M graduate students representing five different schools across campus are working in the education, healthcare and poverty alleviation fields. The projects…

Registration is now open for the upcoming Ann Arbor Health Hackathon: Prototyping Disease Prevention. Click here to register and to find out more about the June 24-26 event, which is sponsored by several organizations including WDI. Round-the-clock hackathons, more commonly associated with software developers and computer programmers building new tech…

WDI Senior Research Fellow Prashant Yadav co-authored a May 19 post on the Financial Times’ blog “beyondbrics” in which he advocates for new ways of raising and disbursing financial aid in the wake of a pandemic. Yadav and co-author Akash Goel, a physician, journalist and World Economic Forum Global Shaper,…

Ted London, WDI Senior Research Fellow and Vice President of the Scaling Impact Initiative, authored the following post for NextBillion.net in which he describes a new framework for creating partnerships that help enterprises achieve sustainable, scalable impact. This article was originally published May 16, 2016 on NextBillion. If you’ve worked in any industry…