Peace Corps News

Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and Business

Swaziland RPCV Reed Hasting's Netflix delivers One Billionth DVD
Netflix said it viewed the one billionth delivery as symbolic of the company's rapid subscriber growth, high levels of customer satisfaction and a record of operational excellence. Netflix's service is widely recognized as among the best and most reliable in Internet commerce. Businessman and Internet Visionary Reed Hastings of California, the founder of Netflix, served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Swaziland.

"I was very interested in serving my country and first joined the Marine Corps in their Platoon Leader Class, a sort of officers’ candidate school. I spent summers in the Marines and between sophomore and junior year I was in Quantico, Va., in boot camp. I found myself questioning how we packed our backpacks and how we made our beds. My questioning wasn’t particularly encouraged, and I realized I might be better off in the Peace Corps."

"I petitioned the recruiting office and left the Marines. After a yearlong application process for the Peace Corps, I left college early on my graduation day to begin my training. I was assigned to a high school with 800 students in northwest Swaziland. I taught geometry, algebra and differential equations. We were in a rural part of the country. We had no electricity and cooked with propane and wood. Corn was our staple. I lived in a thatch hut and slept on a cot. The high school graduation was really colorful. The celebrations were traditional and there were a lot of color wraps and furs. I was one of the few in Western dress."

"I joined the Peace Corps after graduate school and went to teach high school math in Swaziland, out of a combination of service and adventure. It was an extremely satisfying experience. Taking smart risks can be very gratifying. Guessing right is a skill developed over time. Not all smart risks work out, but many of them do."   Read more.

Peru RPCV Peter McPherson named Chairman of the Board of Dow Jones, publishers of the "Wall Street Journal"
Dow Jones & Co. announced today that Peter McPherson will be named chairman of the company during its annual shareholding meeting on April 18. "I look forward to continuing to work closely in this new capacity with my fellow directors, including Rich Zannino," McPherson said in a statement about the company's CEO. "The board believes Rich and his team are successfully executing the right strategy for the digital era. We are working to increase value for shareholders and customers by building on Dow Jones's heritage of journalistic excellence while developing new ways to provide vital business information to today's global audience."

McPherson will continue to serve as president of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. From 1993 to 2004, he served as president of Michigan State University. During his tenure there, he took several months off during 2003 in order to lead a team in Iraq for the Coalition Provisional Authority working with the Iraqi Ministry of Finance and Central Bank. McPherson has also held various positions at Bank of America. From 1987 to 1989 he was deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.  Read more.

Peru RPCV Fred Poses' American Standard to break up into three companies
American Standard is to break up into three, unravelling a $10bn toilets-to-brakes group dating back to the 19th century and sounding another death knell for out-of-favour US conglomerates. The decision by American Standard to spin off its vehicle controls business, sell its bath and kitchen products division and retain its air-conditioning division reflects growing investor dissatisfaction with sprawling groups.

The disenchantment is a rejection of the notion – popular in the 1960s and 1970s – that conglomerates' vast array of businesses offered investors protection from swings in the economic and business cycle. The current trend in favour of more focused companies such as Google and Apple has contributed to the demise of several diversified groups and raised questions over the strategies of some of the surviving ones, such as General Electric and Citigroup.

Fred says an executive takes experience wherever he can get it. “You learn a lot in the sandboxes when you are a little kid,” Fred Poses says, “and you learn a lot in Peru in the Peace Corps.” The chairman and CEO of American Standard Companies spent two years in Peru working with small companies after college. “I’m not sure I raised the gross national product very much, other than the $100 a month we spent,” he says with a laugh, “but it was a wonderful experience.”  Read more.

Read about other Returned Volunteers who have made a career in business.

Returned Peace Corps Volunteers support Fair Trade

Nepal RPCV Damian Jones started Annapolis-based "Aid Through Trade" in 1993 to help provide good employment and fair wages to artisans and farmers in developing countries
Since 2000, Aid Through Trade sales have returned more than $500,000 to the economies of Nepal and Vietnam. Workers from his Admiral Drive company visit either of the countries - sometimes both - each year. The visits allows Aid Through Trade officials to meet the workers, and see their conditions and the environment in which products are being made. "We have to make an assessment of the presence of human dignity, besides looking at wages and exterior conditions," Mr. Jones said. "From a business point of view, that's a big step in the business supply chain." Mr. Jones said he believes fair trade will soon become as popular as organic goods, which are now carried in such grocery stores as Giant and Safeway. "People want to know that their food came from a clean and healthy place," he said. "They also want to know their goods came from a good, healthy, fairly paid source." Read more and leave your comments.

Guatemala RPCV Naren Sonpal Offers Fair Trade Coffee
Naren Sonpal's two-year term of service as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala ended in 2001, but he's still working to make the world a better place, one cup of coffee at a time. He was 55 when he entered the Peace Corps, assigned to work with cooperatives of coffee and tea farmers in the Guatemalan highlands near Coban. On his return, Naren and his wife, Gun, built a business on his experience in Guatemala and a subsequent trip to India, becoming roasters and blenders of 100 percent organic, shade-grown, Fair Trade coffees and purveyors of organic Fair Trade teas. The Sonpals opened Coffee-Tea-Etc. in December of 2002 in the lower level of their Goshen home. Sacks of coffee beans from every corner of the globe are lined up near the couple's state-of-the-art drum roaster.

"Our coffee comes from Mexico, Peru, Sumatra, Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, New Guinea, Costa Rica and Ethiopia," Naren told Voices, "and we know the farms they are coming from. Most multinational companies won't pay what coffee producers need to survive." "The farmers suffer a lot," Naren said. "Right now, they're selling to the big corporations at below their cost of production. When farmers can't make money producing their coffee, they sometimes turn to the production of drugs - and who can blame them?"

Central African Republic RPCV Katie Dyer is co-owner of Cadeaux du Monde, a fair trade shop that sells artwork and jewelry from all over the world
Katie Dyer and Jane Perkins of Newport have done their share of traveling. The mother-daughter duo are the co-owners of Cadeaux du Monde, a fair trade shop in Newpor, Rhode Island that sells artwork and jewelry from all over the world, representing over 40 countries. What is Fair Trade? It's fairly traded folk art, directly from the village. There's not a lot of middle men. It's the same idea as fair trade coffee where the producers actually get a fair price. We buy directly from them so they're in control of their prices.

Read more about Fair Trade and leave your comments.