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Expertise: Post-conflict humanitarian intervention; food aid; climate change and deforestation; ecological tourism; green trade; Bolivia; Liberia; West Africa; indigenous peoples; globalization.
William Powers is author of two critically-acclaimed books from Bloomsbury/Macmillan. Blue Clay People: Seasons on Africa’s Fragile Edge, an on-the-ground account of Powers’ two years in Charles Taylor’s civil war Liberia, was a bestseller at Harvard’s bookstore and a Publisher’s Weekly notable book of 2005. Whispering in the Giant’s Ear: A Frontline Chronicle from Bolivia’s War on Globalization (2006) has been featured on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross and in Newsweek and is now in its second printing. His forthcoming book, The Soft World (2009), provides a look at the stubborn pockets of humanity and culture that are quietly resisting globalization's homogenizing forces.
For over a decade Powers has led development aid and conservation initiatives in Latin America, Africa, and Washington, D.C. From 2002 to 2004 he managed the socio-economic components of a project in the Bolivian Amazon that won the Roy Family Award for environmental partnership from Harvard's JFK School of Government.
His essays on global issues have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Slate, The Sun, and the International Herald Tribune, and have been syndicated to three hundred newspapers around the world and translated into a dozen languages. Powers has appeared on programs such as NPR’s Living on Earth, Fresh Air, The Leonard Lopate Show, West Coast Live, Left Jab, World Vision Report, and Book TV. He has been keynote speaker/ presenter / panelist at dozens of events throughout the U.S. and in South America.
Powers has worked as a Fellow at the World Bank in Washington, D.C.; Head of Programs for Catholic Relief Services in Liberia; Chief of Party of a major USAID / Conservation International rainforest conservation program in Bolivia; and Facilitator of the DFID / IUCN-World Conservation Union forest law-enforcement, governance, and trade dialogues project in Liberia.
Education B.A. (honors) Brown University M.S. (honors) Georgetown University / School of Foreign Service
Languages
Contact: wp@williampowersbooks.com Website: www.williampowersbooks.com
BOOKS
Appearances WILLIAM POWERS was on the faculty of the 2009 Ann Arbor Book Festival and spoke about his Liberia book Blue Clay People at this year’s Breakfast with the Author event, May 15-16, 2009. WILLIAM POWERS spoke on carbon ranching, poverty reduction, and Amazonian cultural survival at the “Climate Change Forum,” hosted by Synergos & the Institute for Philanthropy, May 5, 2009.
ARTICLES A list of William Powers' selected work can be viewed at
http://williampowersbooks.com/MoreWriting.htm
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New York Times: "All Smoke, No Fire in Bolivia" on the Bolivian Petroleum Nationalization
New York Times: "Poor Little Rich Country" on the Bolivian Indian Revolt
Newsweek Interview with Bill on Rainforests and Coca
New York Times: "The Forest for the Peace" on a Peace-for-Nature Swap in Africa
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William
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