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Staff

 

 

Director
                      
Raymond Baker
Managing Director 
             Tom Cardamone
Lead Economist              Dev Kar
Legal Counsel & Director of Government Affairs
  Heather Lowe
Economist              Devon Cartwright-Smith
Junior Economist
             Karly Curcio
Coordinator, Task Force on Financial Integrity & International Development
             Christine Clough
Communications Director     
             Monique Perry Danziger
Director of New Media & Communications Associate
             Clark Gascoigne
Executive Assistant & Office Manager
             Sarah Bracht

 

Staff members may be contacted using the following email format: first initial followed by last name @gfip.org. 

For example, John Smith's email address would be jsmith@gfip.org. 

 


 

Raymond Baker is the Director of Global Financial Integrity and the author of Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free-Market System, published by John Wiley & Sons and cited by the Financial Times as one of the “best business books of 2005.” He has for many years been an internationally respected authority on corruption, money laundering, growth, and foreign policy issues, particularly as they concern developing and transitional economies and impact upon western economic and foreign interests. He has written and spoken extensively, testified often before legislative committees in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, been quoted worldwide, and has commented frequently on television and radio in the United States, Europe, and Asia on legislative matters and policy questions, including appearances on Nightline, CNN, BBC, NPR, Four Corners, and GloboNews, among others.

 

Mr. Baker is a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., researching and writing on the linkages between corruption, money laundering, and poverty. In 1996 he received a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for a project entitled, “Flight Capital, Poverty and Free-Market Economics.” He traveled to 23 countries to interview 335 central bankers, commercial bankers, government officials, economists, lawyers, tax collectors, security officers, and sociologists on the relationships between bribery, commercial tax evasion, money laundering, and economic growth. From 1985 to 1996 Mr. Baker provided confidential economic advisory services at the presidential level for developing country governments. Activities focused principally on issues surrounding anti-corruption strategies, international terms of trade, and developing country debt. Research was conducted with 550 business owners and managers in eleven countries, concerning import and export mispricing and movement of tax-evading capital.

 

From 1976 to 1985 Mr. Baker conducted extensive trading activities throughout Latin America and in ten Asian countries including the People’s Republic of China. An affiliated company in London handled transactions in Europe. From 1961 to 1976 he lived in Nigeria and established and managed an investment company which set up and acquired manufacturing and financing ventures, the subject of two Harvard Business School case studies. Educated at Harvard Business School and Georgia Institute of Technology, Mr. Baker is the author of “The Biggest Loophole in the Free-Market System,” “Illegal Flight Capital; Dangers for Global Stability,” “How Dirty Money Binds the Poor,” and other works published in the United States and Europe.

 


 

Sarah Bracht is an executive assistant at Global Financial Integrity. Prior to joining GFI, Sarah worked as a legal assistant at BuckleySandler LLP, a financial services law firm located in Washington, D.C. Sarah graduated from the University of Dayton in 2006 with a B.A. in International Studies and French Language. As an undergraduate student, she conceived and coordinated a month-long international exposition to promote the exchange of cultural experiences and to advance study abroad opportunities. The program has since been turned into an annual event hosted by the University's Center for International Programs.

 

 

 

 

 


 

Tom Cardamone is the Managing Director of Global Financial Integrity (GFI). For two decades he has worked for and led non-profit public policy organizations in Washington, DC. Among his roles Cardamone has been an analyst, Project Director and Executive Director for, and a consultant to, several non-profit organizations.

 

Prior to joining GFI, Cardamone was a consultant to non-governmental organizations in the areas of strategic organizational and program planning, development and web site content. From 2000 to 2003 he was Executive Director of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a Washington, D.C.-based arms control group. As a Project Director for the Center from 1993 – 2000, Cardamone developed and implemented the core components of an educational project on the economic, security and human rights implications of excessive military equipment sales to developing nations.

 

During his career Cardamone has advocated policy positions on television, talk-radio and in print media including on CNN, Canadian Broadcasting and in numerous newspapers. He has delivered remarks on security issues at the James E. Baker, III, Institute for Public Policy at Rice University and at the John F. Kennedy Library. He also was a contributing author for the book “War or Health: A Reader.”

 


 

Devon Cartwright-Smith is an Economist at Global Financial Integrity. He recently completed a Masters in Economics at Georgetown University. Prior to joining GFI, Mr. Cartwright-Smith was the Operations Analyst at Baker & Taylor, the largest U.S. distributor of books, music and movies for libraries and retailers, with six branches nationwide. While there, he reengineered the previous approach to data collection and processing into vastly more efficient methods. He moved the company from a manual reporting framework to a fully automated Excel-driven reporting system. He was regularly sought out by several other departments, company-wide, to develop creative solutions to problems and operational inefficiencies.

 

Mr. Cartwright-Smith graduated from Bates College in 2003 with a degree in Economics. For his senior thesis, he acquired data from over 1100 completed eBay auctions using original scripts written in Excel, defined new market spaces for item types, and created and parameterized a pair of models, one for each market space, that determined, in a linear regression analysis, the final price in an auction and, alternatively, the number of bidders in an auction. In 2001 he won a competitive fellowship, where he was retained as a consultant to advise the city of Lewiston, Maine on strategies for implementing a mixed-income housing initiative.

 


 

Christine Clough is the Coordinator for the Task Force on Financial Integrity & Economic Development at Global Financial Integrity. Prior to joining GFI, Christine was employed most recently at the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy, working with Congress, Federal agencies, and the White House to advocate for the needs and critical role of small business in the U.S. economy. Christine also has experience working on terrorism and homeland security at think-tanks in Washington, DC. 

 

Christine graduated from Connecticut College in 2006 with a degree in Economics and International Relations.  She is currently enrolled in the Security Studies Program in the School for Foreign Service at Georgetown University working on a master’s degree.

 

 

 


 

Karly Curcio is a Junior Economist at Global Financial Integrity. In 2009 she graduated with honors from Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Political Science. She completed her departmental theses her Junior year and dedicated her final year to researching and writing a separate work titled "Threat Perception and Sovereign Wealth", analyzing the foreign and economic policies of playing host to international investments by sovereign governments. Before coming to GFI, Karly was a legislative intern for United States Senator Charles Schumer, working on primarily Banking and Foreign Affairs issues as well as collaborating on research with staffers of the Joint Economic Committee.

 

 

 

 

 


 

Monique Perry Danziger is the Communications Director for Global Financial Integrity and has more than 9 years of policy and media relations experience working for Washington, DC non profit groups including the National Environmental Trust, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the Alliance to Save Energy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

Clark Gascoigne is the Director of New Media & Communications Associate at Global Financial Integrity. He comes to GFI from the College Democrats of America (CDA) where he most recently served as the National Communications Director – coordinating youth communications with Obama for America and the Democratic National Committee throughout the 2008 election cycle.  A founding member of CDA’s new media effort, Clark previously served as the organization’s National New Media Director, and has a number of years of political and non-profit communications experience.  He is a graduate of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.

 

 

 

 

 


 

Dev Kar is the Lead Economist at Global Financial Integrity. Prior to joining the GFI, Dev was a Senior Economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Washington DC. During a career spanning nearly 32 years at the IMF, Dev worked on a wide variety of macroeconomic and statistical issues, both at IMF headquarters and on different types of IMF missions to member countries (technical assistance, Article IV Consultations with member countries, and Use of IMF Resources).

 

His interesting assignments at the IMF included: (i) research studies on the functions and role of central banks which formed the basis for the design, development, and implementation of a large-scale database on laws, regulations, and data on various aspects of central banking operations (ii) technical papers on the operational budget of the IMF (iii) carrying out complex IMF operational transactions with member countries (iv) review of IMF lending programs involving the use of its financial resources in order to assess sovereign and liquidity risks (v) the monitoring of economic and political developments in Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) and in Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF)-eligible countries (vi) preparation of research papers and discussion notes on the role of the SDR in the international monetary system and the use of the SDR as a unit of account by multilateral institutions (vii) critiquing technical assistance papers based on expert technical knowledge of international methodological guidelines on national accounts, price statistics, and merchandise trade (viii) providing technical assistance to member countries in the area of national accounts, prices, and external trade in order to build members' statistical capacities (ix) preparing papers for discussion by the IMF Executive Board on recent cases of overdue financial obligations of certain members and assessing the likelihood of payments by these countries (x) preparing short papers on the external debt situation of heavily indebted countries and providing technical assistance to IMF economists in forecasting external debt profiles (xi) conducting extensive research on early warning models that seek to predict an external debt crisis for heavily indebted countries (xii) developing statistical measures and indicators on quantitative and non-quantitative trade restrictions, dumping, and other trade policy issues, comparing them across countries and within countries over time. 

 

Dev has a Ph.D. in Economics from the George Washington University (Major: Monetary Economics), an M. Phil (Economics), also from the same university (Major: International Economics) and a M.S. (Computer Science) from Howard University (Major: Database Management Systems). His undergraduate degree in Physics is from St. Xavier’s College, University of Calcutta, India. Dev has published a number of articles on macroeconomic and statistical issues both inside and outside the IMF.

 


 

Heather Lowe is the Legal Counsel and Director of Government Affairs at Global Financial Integrity. Ms. Lowe brings international legislative experience and banking and finance law experience to her role, having worked as an aide to a British Member of the European Parliament in Brussels and as a banking and finance attorney at both Clifford Chance LLP in London and Bingham McCutchen LLP in Boston. She is admitted to the Bar in the State of New York and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

 

Ms Lowe is a graduate of Boston College Law School (J.D.) and The University of Chicago (A.B.). As part of her degree programs she also studied English, European and international law at the London School of Economics and Political Science and King’s College London.