Laurence Simon

Related Program

Global Development Practice Master’s Degree Program

About Laurence Simon

Laurence Simon is Professor of International Development and Director of the Center for Global Development and Sustainability at Brandeis University. In his early career, he was Director of Policy Analysis and Advocacy at Oxfam America and helped develop its program in Central America, including community residential earthquake resilience in highland Guatemala. As Oxfam’s first director of advocacy, he pioneered impact audits of major development programs and policies, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s flawed land reform in El Salvador.

His work sparked Congressional Hearings and an investigative report by The New York Times. As Founder and President of American Jewish World Service, he led a team assessing post-harvest losses in Africa and Asia resulting in pesticide-free technologies that met the terms of the Montreal Protocol. He led successful trials of hermetic storage under the auspices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the UN World Food Programme.

Simon founded GrainPro, Inc., the leader in hermetic technology for storage and transport. He served as the resident evaluation specialist in Sri Lanka for the World Bank/UN Development Programme (UNDP) poverty reduction program. Appointed by Google as Senior Advisor on Global Poverty, he helped launch the Google Foundation, hired senior staff, and developed its global strategies. In 2017, the Sri Lankan Prime Minister appointed him to a planning group for an elite university of engineering.

Currently, he is planning a bi-national pilot program for integrated vector control to reduce dengue fever in South Asia. Simon is joint Editor-in-Chief of CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion. He holds a PhD in geography.