Noreena Hertz
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Prof. Noreena Hertz (born September 24, 1967, London) is an English economist, author and campaigner. She is a leading expert on economic globalisation.
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[edit] Life
Noreena Hertz is a great-granddaughter of British Chief Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz and was born and brought up in London, England. When she was 20 years old, her mother, fashion designer and feminist activist, Leah Hertz, died of cancer.
Hertz attended Westminster School, University College London (for bachelor's degree), UK and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (for MBA), U.S. before attaining her PhD in Economics from the University of Cambridge (King's).
At the invitation of a professor at Wharton, she then went to Russia to work for the World Bank and play a part in setting up the Russian stock exchange and in advising the Russian government on its privatisation programmes.
Her disenchanted and highly critical Cambridge doctoral thesis, "Russian Business Relationships in the Wake of Reform", dispelling the myth of Russia's successful transition to a market economy and questioning the bank's requirements, was published in 1996.
In 2002, The Silent Takeover:Global Capitalism and The Death of Democracy was published.
She then turned her attention to the Middle East Peace Process, where she headed a 40-member research team of Palestinians, Israelis, Jordanians and Egyptians .
In 2005, IOU: The Debt Threat was published. A popular treatise on the dangers of irrational lending, it was publicly endorsed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Sir Bob Geldof and Bono.
Hertz's books have been published in many countries, including the UK, the United States, Japan, Holland, Spain, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Kuwait, Denmark, China, Taiwan, the Czech Republic, France, Canada.
During 2005, Hertz also served a 6 month professorship at the University of Utrecht, Holland. As of 2006, Hertz is a fellow and associate director at Cambridge's Judge Business School.
She was selected as a 'Young Global Leader of Tomorrow' by the World Economic Forum in 2004. In 2001, Management Today named her amongst the top 35 women under 35.[1]
In 2000, the UK newspaper The Observer described Hertz as 'one of the world's leading young thinkers'.
In 2001, Vogue magazine named Hertz 'one of the world's most inspiring women'.
In 2006, Hertz played a leading role in the development of (RED) - an innovative commercial model to raise money for AIDS victims in Africa. The singer Bono was also closely involved in the project and has described Hertz's writings as the inspiration for the (RED) project.
In 2008, Harpers Bazaar chose Hertz as "one of the most powerful women in Britain" and described her as "one of the greatest communicators of our generation."
In 2008, Hertz accepted a Visiting Professorship at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Holland.
She is engaged to Danny Cohen, the Channel controller of BBC Three, a British digital television channel aimed at 16–34-year-olds.
[edit] Books
Prof. Hertz has published several studies on globalization and Russia. She used to work for the World Bank, and has written several popular books from that experience, including:
- 1997: Russian Business Relationships in the Wake of Reform (ISBN 0-333-71083-5)
- 2001: The Silent Takeover : Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy (ISBN 0-7432-3478-2)
- 2005: The Debt Threat : How Debt Is Destroying the Developing World (ISBN 0-06-056052-5)
- 2005: IOU: The Debt Threat and Why We Must Defuse It (ISBN 0-00-717899-9)
[edit] Politics
Hertz is regarded as being on the centre-left, rather than the further left position of the author to whom she is sometimes compared, Naomi Klein.
[edit] Campaigns
In April 2007 Hertz launched a campaign in Britain to alleviate low pay problems suffered by nurses, by asking several hundred top-flight footballers and managers into contributing a day's pay to a hardship fund for nurses struggling in their first few years, and above all to draw public attention to the issue. [1]
The Royal College of Nursing is collecting and administering the fund, and as of October 2007 began the distribution process.
