NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

For those headed down career paths related to nutrition and global health, experts and industry professionals aren’t just calling for medical degrees or experience in the clinical field.

What’s needed, officials from UNICEF, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and political scientists told Devex, is business and tech expertise — namely MBA-holders and nutrition technologists.

The call for business-savvy aid workers isn’t unique to global health. Cross-sector development naturally requires stronger finance and private sector know-how, particularly when it comes to risk assessment and accounting, Devex’s Kelli Rogers wrote a few months ago. But for nutrition and the challenges related to global hunger, business and economic expertise offers not only leverage in the food manufacturing industries — nutrition’s bread and butter — but into government budgets as well.