You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Within a year <strong>of</strong> Jean<br />
Gilson’s arrival in<br />
Eastern Europe, <strong>DAI</strong><br />
had staff in numerous<br />
Eastern bloc<br />
countries, including<br />
Estonia, shown here.<br />
50<br />
Banking and the Eastern<br />
Bloc<br />
After arriving at <strong>DAI</strong>, Jean Gilson put her<br />
banking experience to work on several small<br />
finance-related projects in Latin America. By the<br />
fall <strong>of</strong> 1990, the onset <strong>of</strong> the buy-in to GEMINI in<br />
Poland had convinced her that <strong>DAI</strong> needed not<br />
only to further develop its expertise in banking,<br />
but should also focus more closely on Eastern<br />
Europe, especially on privatization. As Boomgard<br />
had done with microenterprise two <strong>years</strong><br />
earlier, she took her case to senior management,<br />
where she found approval and encouragement.<br />
It was, she said later, “an incredibly<br />
Photo by Alex Hiniker, <strong>DAI</strong><br />
heady time in terms <strong>of</strong> the company’s willingness<br />
to be entrepreneurial and nimble.”<br />
In 1991, Gilson set up the company’s first<br />
geographical management unit for Central and<br />
Eastern Europe, and brought Chase Manhattan<br />
Bank veteran Daniel Hogan into a newly<br />
formed banking sector unit. The effort paid <strong>of</strong>f<br />
when <strong>DAI</strong> landed a spot on an IQC team led by<br />
Deloitte and Touche for Regional Restructuring<br />
and Privatization in Eastern Europe. In late<br />
1991, Gilson was the first USAID consultant to<br />
work in Albania, Hogan was in Romania, and<br />
other staffers were undertaking assignments in<br />
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Hungary, and<br />
Slovakia.<br />
Even though business from Central and Eastern<br />
Europe accounted for just 1 percent <strong>of</strong> <strong>DAI</strong>’s<br />
revenues in 1991, management had committed<br />
to expanding there and diversifying beyond<br />
banking. Three <strong>years</strong> later, <strong>DAI</strong> won its first<br />
prime contract in the former Soviet Union, to<br />
develop support networks and assist small businesses<br />
in Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine, and<br />
began a large democratic governance project in<br />
Poland that would continue for four <strong>years</strong>.<br />
Despite these early initiatives, free enterprise<br />
came slowly to the region, and policy makers<br />
decided they had to do more to foster the integration<br />
<strong>of</strong> East and West. In 1994, USAID put<br />
out a solicitation for an umbrella IQC covering<br />
a broad range <strong>of</strong> economic growth priorities,<br />
encompassing everything from enterprise development<br />
to banking sector reform and privatiza-
Change language