PM Scene: Faces and Places
September - October 2003
Mark Austin Rural Development and Project Management
Specialist
Global Project Management Leader
Mark
Austin is a Rural Development and Project Management Specialist at the World
Bank, the Latin American and Caribbean Region, where he has worked from 1996
to present. The World Bank is an organization that works in more than 100
developing economies with the primary focus of helping the poorest people
in the poorest countries and is one of the world's largest sources of economic
and social development assistance.
At the World Bank, Mark manages a portfolio of rural development projects in the agriculture and environmental sectors which are executed by client countries. Most of these projects are Community Demand Driven where poor communities are assisted in the identification and prioritization of their needs, appropriate support given in designing, preparing and executing both basic social infrastructure and productive community subprojects. Over the last 7 years, Mark has been involved with over 50 development projects. Mark also started the Project Management Thematic Group (PMTG) at the World Bank and served as the Group Leader from 1999 - 2001. The PMTG focuses on internal World Bank project management initiatives.
Prior to joining the World Bank, Mark spent two years in rural Guatemala facilitating a rural development program, lived for five years in California where he owned and operated an environmental site clean up company and was a regional marketing manager responsible for 200 sales people and five district managers for an educational products company.
During the last two decades, Mark has work, lived or traveled in over fifty-eight countries in the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, Europe and North, Central and South America. Mark has over seventeen years experience in project management, project design, planning, evaluating and project management information systems in the environmental, agricultural, micro-enterprise, community and rural development sectors.
Mark currently serves as Director-at-Large of the Project Management Institute (PMI) Board of Directors. Previous to serving on the PMI Board of Directors, Mark founded and Chaired the PMI International Development Specific Interest Group which seeks to: establish and promote a forum of communications and interchange between international development project management professionals; provide state-of-the-art information about knowledge, principles, practices and techniques in International Development Project Management; promote the Project Management profession for international development funded projects and programs in developing countries and within international development institutions; and, provide a resource for lending agencies and officials in developing countries for improving project management on international development programs and projects.
Mark also serves on the Executive Committee of the Brigham Young University Washington, D.C. Management Society as the Chair for the Scholarship Committee and has served on the Board of Directors of The Barzak Educational Institute, where he provided the strategic oversight and leadership for marketing operations nationwide for accelerated learning seminars and elementary and secondary school programs and guided strategic business planning process for the Institute.
Contact Information :
Mark Austin, PMP
Project Management Specialist
The World Bank
1818 H Street, NW, Office I6-109, Washington, DC 20433 USA
Tel. (202) 473-4720, Fax (202) 676-0199 or (202) 614-1254
Email:
maustin@worldbank.org
World Bank Web Site: http://www.worldbank.org