Monthly Archives: June 2021

The study has received funding support of 3.5 million from the Wellcome Trust and Chen Yet-Sen Family Foundation

LV Prasad Eye Institute in collaboration with the Queen's University of Belfast, along with nearly 30 other partners from the US, the UK, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and India, is working on a suite of studies to explore the impact of vision care on the global level to achieve Sustainable Development Goals in low and middle-income countries. The study has received funding support of 3.5 million from the Wellcome Trust and Chen Yet-Sen Family Foundation.

Led by Professor Nathan Congdon of Queens University Belfast (QUB) in the UK and Dr Rohit Khanna of the LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI), various universities, schools non-government organisations, public health bodies, government ministries, institutions and patient groups are part of the multi-disciplinary study team. From LVPEI, Senior Public Health Specialists Dr Srinivas Marmamula and Asha Latha Metla and Senior Retina Consultant - Dr Raja Narayanan are also part of the study.

The other collaborators from India include Dr Suvarna Alladi from NIMHANS at Bengaluru, Dr Pallab Maulik from The George Institute for Global Health India at New Delhi and ShashidharKomaravolu from the Alzheimers and Related Disorders Society of India, Hyderabad Deccan Chapter.

Termed as ENGINE (Eyecare Nurtures Good-health, Innovation, driving-safety and Education), it is a five-year project designed to leverage high-quality research results to drive lasting policy change and achieve an improved quality of life for people in low and middle-income countries. ENGINE comprises four research trials in India, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, to examine the impact of glasses on promoting better living, from childhood to old age, and the impact on multiple SDGs, says Dr Rohit Khanna, Director, Gullapalli Pratibha Rao International Centre for Advancement of Rural Eye care (GPR ICARE), LV Prasad Eye Institute.

The four research projects that are part of this study are:

CLEVER (Cognitive Level Enhancement through Vision Exams and Refraction) that supports the Indian governments strategy of finding scalable, low-cost means of preventing dementia. This project is built upon the work done in homes for the aged project funded by Wellcome Trust India Alliance.

STABLE (Slashing Two-wheeler Accidents By Leveraging Eyecare) that will assist local partners, including the Vietnamese Ministry of Transport, to combat Vietnams twin epidemics of uncorrected short-sightedness and motorcycle crashes in the young.

ZEAL (Zimbabwe Eyecare and Learning) will work with local partners who currently implement the Zimbabwe governments national school vision project to explore how targeting long-sighted children with the novel, low-cost screening can add to the academic impact of the programme.

THRIFT (Transforming Households with Refraction and Innovative Financial Technology) that will capitalise on the Bangladesh governments novel and forward-looking plan to digitise all social safety net payments to the elderly by providing free glasses and training to help them better cope with unfamiliar smartphones, thus improving financial independence.

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LV Prasad Eye Institute, global partners explore impact of vision care to achieve SDGs - BSI bureau

* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

By Bogolo Kenewendo, an economist, a member of the UKs Gender Equality Advisory Council, the formerMinister of Investment, Trade and Industry of Botswana and the managing director of Kenewendo Advisory, an economic advisory firm based in Botswana

There is an African saying: empower a woman and empower a community.

As the G7 leaders meet in Cornwall, the acknowledgement of this simple truth has never been more vital.

The UN estimates that the COVID-19 pandemic has dumped 47 million more women and girls below the poverty line. Women are particularly vulnerable to the pandemics impact because they tend to work and run businesses in the informal economy where there is no state-provided safety net of any sort.

This disproportional impact extends to access to capital. In sub-Saharan Africa, 40% of businesses are owned by women but only 20% of that number have access to institutional finance. Thats a funding gap of $42 billion. As risk averse private financial institutions retrench in the wake of the pandemic, this situation is getting significantly worse, causing what could be termed a she-cession.

In order to lessen the impact of the pandemic and potential of economic scarring, governments have to employ transformative economic recovery plans that focuses on inclusion through building womens economic agency. This is where gender-lens investing comes in. In simple terms, gender-lens investing is about deploying capital in people and companies with the specific goal of supporting women.

Gender lens investing wont only assist in reaching the UNs Sustainable Development Goal on gender equality, but is also a catalyst for achieving all of the other SDGs. The economic, business, as well as the social case, for investing in women is obvious. Among many different metrics which support this argument is a recent study by McKinsey estimated that if women's economic participation rates were the same as men it would be worth an additional $28 trillion to the global economy by 2025. By anyones standards, these numbers are huge and underline the scale of both the problem and the opportunity to invest in women.

The 2X Challenge, founded by the development finance institutions of the G7 nations to increase investment in women, has a set of qualifying criteria for investments which serve as a very useful guide for what this means in practice.

There are hundreds of examples of businesses that have benefited from gender lens investment. PEG Africa, a solar power company providing home systems to customers in West Africa has received $12.5 million of 2X investment from the UKs CDC Group. As a result, the company has doubled the number of women in leadership positions from 22% to 44%.

The success of the 2X Challenge, which is set to raise a further $15 billion over the next two years for investing in women in the developing world, is very welcome. And that success underlines the vital importance of development finance institutions, such as DFC in the US and CDC Group in the UK, in encouraging global private financial institutions to adopt gender lens criteria.

As a member of the Gender Equality Advisory Council (GEAC),set up by the UK government to look at how we support women as part of the build back better agenda, we will be pressing the G7 leaders to place women and gender equity at the heart of plans to build back better. They have an opportunity an opportunity to provide leadership in building inclusive economies that prioritise women and their children.

The G7 can play a key role in providing access to capital and labour markets for women. This is a crucial component of economic empowerment, and central to womens financial independence globally. Women more often face barriers to securing finance, insurance and business ownership, thereby hindering entrepreneurship.

We need to encourage financial stakeholders to leverage the power of capital markets and movements of resources to steer responsible business conduct and foster inclusive corporate cultures.

Job creation initiatives should be pivoted to increase support for women-led industries and policies tailored to support women-owned micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs).

We require existing and new Aid for Trade initiatives to include the tools for crafting gender-responsive trade policies, to support women in programmes that foster trade and economic empowerment and to work directly with women-owned businesses in developing countries.

The stakes could not be higher, nor the opportunity greater.

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The G7 must place women at the heart of build back better agenda - Thomson Reuters Foundation

WALTHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Digital Guardian, a leader in data loss prevention (DLP) and managed detection and response (MDR), today announced that the Boston Business Journal (BBJ) has named its Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Susan Walker, 2021 CFO of the Year in the Midsize Private Companies category.

Honoring the best in local finance, the BBJs CFO of the Year Awards program recognizes 10 chief financial officers whose work and commitment has helped make a difference in their companies, organizations, and communities. This years awards, like last years, are especially meaningful as these business executives have helped steer their organizations through the coronavirus pandemic and unprecedented financial challenges.

Since joining Digital Guardian in 2019, Walker has transformed the companys financial infrastructure, including helping to migrate its customer base from perpetual licensing to a SaaS subscription model. In addition, she was instrumental in guiding the companys smooth transition to remote work, and in streamlining reporting and other critical business processes. Notably, Walker also helped develop an innovative mid-market program that delivers prescriptive data protection to a historically underserved customer base. Launched in April, the industrys first DLP-as-a-service solution for mid-market enterprises has already generated a robust slate of closed deals and a growing revenue pipeline.

Accomplished and accountable, Susan combines financial creativity with fiscal rigor to help drive corporate and customer success, said Mordecai (Mo) Rosen, Chief Executive Officer, Digital Guardian. During the early days of the pandemic, she spearheaded a COVID-19-adjusted corporate plan that prioritized financial independence to help preserve both cash and jobs. Her vision and leadership propelled Digital Guardian to record employee retention and to one of the best years in company history. Along with everyone else at Digital Guardian, I am thrilled she is being recognized with this prestigious and well-deserved honor.

Charged with leading Digital Guardians HR department and fostering its corporate culture, Walker has helped boost employee retention to an all-time high. As a result, the company has earned impressive accolades, including being named a Top Place to Work in Massachusetts by The Boston Globe and a Top Place to Work in the USA by Energage.

I am excited to celebrate my two-year anniversary at Digital Guardian with this wonderful honor, said Walker. The recognition reflects the collective efforts of an incredible leadership team that has positioned Digital Guardian as the leading provider companies go to for protecting their critical data and IP from the endpoint to the cloud. As we transition to the post- COVID-19 era, I am energized to continue collaborating with Mo and the executive team in helping Digital Guardian reach even higher heights in 2021 and beyond.

We are thrilled to celebrate our 13th year of honoring local CFOs and their accomplishments, said BBJ Market President and Publisher Carolyn M. Jones. Strong financial stewardship and strategic leadership have never been as important as the past year and a half, and we look forward to honoring and recognizing the importance of the role of the CFO.

The 2021 BBJ CFO of the Year Awards program will be held virtually on Wednesday, July 14. For more information, including event registration and the complete list of winners, please visit: https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/event/166534/2021/cfo-of-the-year-virtual-event.

About Digital Guardian

Digital Guardian is no-compromise data protection. The companys cloud-delivered data protection platform is purpose-built to stop data loss by both insiders and outsiders on Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. The Digital Guardian Data Protection Platform performs across the corporate network, traditional endpoints, and cloud applications. For more than 15 years, we have enabled data-rich organizations to protect their most valuable assets with a choice of SaaS or fully managed deployment. Digital Guardians unique policy-less data visibility and flexible controls enable organizations to protect data without slowing the pace of their business. To learn more please visit: https://digitalguardian.com/.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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Digital Guardian's Susan Walker Named a Boston Business Journal 2021 CFO of the Year - Business Wire

In September 2020, I wondered aloud in this very column what the financial sensibility of Americans would be like when the pandemic was over.

I surmised that Americans would potentially experience a renaissance of resourcefulness, stoked by the powers of scarcity. This, according to my theory, would lead to modesty over consumerism and a healthy savings rate that could persist for years.

Hahahaha. What a noob.

I remember the first time I heard someone say YOLO. I had no idea what they were talking about until it was explained that it was simply an acronym for You Only Live Once.

From what Ive seen over the last three months, I believe one of the primary cultural side effects of COVID-19 will be unadulterated spending in the spirit of YOLO. If Im gonna be miserable, I might as well be comfortable, is the tale currently being told.

The housing market is red-hot, the travel industry is on the verge of poetic justice earned by a year lost, and certain consumer goods are increasingly difficult to find (and not just because of large boats getting stuck in man-made waterways in Egypt.)

I did acknowledge pent-up demand could lead to a robust economic recovery, but I didnt expect people to spend their feelings so hard. But on some level, I get it. I found myself telling my wife I wanted a new shirt to run in this past weekend. Might as well be comfortable, I heard myself say, with utter disrespect to the two to three dozen other T-shirts in my drawers.

I now believe the 24-month period ending February 2022 will result in an increase in lifestyle spending as opposed to an increase in the savings rate. My assertion last September was that people would be scared straight, then save. Instead, now I believe people will seek comfort in comfort, as opposed to pragmatism.

That is whats actually at the heart of my thinking right nowa reimagining of financial pragmatism. Ive long believed people should put their financial future before their financial present. To me, thats the essence of financial pragmatism.

Hope is great, but its not a financial strategy. Saving the correct amount of money before you spend any money honors math and illuminates the impracticality of hope. But, and this is a giant but, there might be more art than science when it comes to financially thriving.

As you likely know, my classic definition of thriving revolves around a dependable and sustainable financial plan that perpetually wards off instability. However, indulging in comfort along the way, whether for mental wellness or simple joy, seems to have gained ground in the face of the pandemic and the recession. And I think thats OK.

Just as workers have attempted to shift the paradigm of work/life balance to an arguably more appropriate life/work balance within the last year, maybe thats where long-term financial planning is headed, too. Maybe, just maybe, people will figure out how to have a more significant financial lifestyle in their working years, then recast their lot to a more modest and sustainable post-work financial existence.

Dont get me wrong, thats exactly what millions of people unwittingly do now, without the math to support the theory. But Im suggesting that people might harness the powers of being more mentally well now and fight harder to make the math work indefinitely.

Its actually a reasonable evolution. At first, there was the modest working-years lifestyle that created a reasonable nest egg. Then the F.I.R.E. (financial independence, retire early) movement convinced us a spartan existence during the work years can lead to a long and comfortable retirement. Now, after a year of anguish and languish, its possible people will figure out how to have their cake and eatit, too.

Which, by the way, is a tough promise mathematically. Will people really be able to spend aggressively during their working years, then glide into a more modest retirement?

Im not holding my breath.

My gut tells me this grand experiment goes out with a whimper in mid- to late-2022. Youll know this is the case when consumer debt levels begin to rise exponentially once again. Debt levels are already rising, and I think the savings rate that rose briefly in 2020 will make its way back into the cellar. Yet there is some appeal and practicality to giving mental health more influence in our financial decision-making process.

Check back with me again in nine monthswho knows what Americans will be doing then?

__________

Dunn is CEO of Your Money Line powered by Pete the Planner, an employee-benefit organization focused on solving employees financial challenges. Email your financial questions to askpete@petetheplanner.com.

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PETE THE PLANNER: As pandemic eases, lifestyle spending will increase - Indianapolis Business Journal

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry welcomed their newborn daughter, Lilibet Lili Diana Mountbatten-Windsor, on Friday, June 4 in Santa Barbra, California, and announced the happy news and gorgeous name of their daughter that honours the Queen of England and the late Princess Diana the following Sunday (June 6). Since the announcement, tons of media reports have claimed that the former Duke and Duchess of Sussex offended the Queen by using her childhood nickname for their newborn, with some reports even going as far as claiming that Harrys grandmother was deeply hurt and angry by Meghan and Harrys choice, but is that truly the case?

According to reports, the name Lilibet has been the Queens nickname among her family members since she was a young child and originated from her own struggle to pronounce her name at an early age.

It was also revealed previously on Netflixs The Crown,that the nickname was often used by her late husband Prince Philip, who only passed away in April just months from his 100th birthday, so this particular name should invoke fond memories for the Queen.

Following the announcement of the birth, Buckingham Palace issued a statement to congratulate Meghan, Harry and Archie on their new addition to their family! Which was shortly followed by a sweet message from the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on their Instagram page. Check out the post below.

And although it seemed that Lilis name was accepted by the royals, the former Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who were already parents to two-year-old Archie Harrison, were later forced to issue a statement after their daughters name caused quite the online stir with royal watchers and commentators.

Despite the sentimental nod to both Prince Harrys grandmother and late mother, Princess Dianna, some have criticised Harry and Meghan for the decision. Some suggesting that Harry and Meghandidnt approach the Queen for permission to use the personal name.

Whilst others have claimed that this is an attempt to smooth things over with the Royal Family, after a year of turmoil, following their decision to step down from their duties as senior members of the Royal Family in March 2020 in order to pursue financial independence, as well as their more recent explosive tell-all interview with journalist Oprah Winfrey.

Whatever their reason for using the sweet and sentimental name, the couple made sure to set the record straight on those wild claims.

A spokesperson told UK publicationThe Independent:

The Duke spoke with his family in advance of the announcement. In fact, his grandmother was the first family member he called.During that conversation, he shared their hope of naming their daughter Lilibet in her honour. Had she [Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth] not been supportive, they would not have used the name.

Currently, no pictures of baby Lili have been released, and were not expecting any from the notoriously private couple for some time still, but it seems were not the only ones that are waiting to catch a glimpse of the newborn.

Kate Middleton who attended the G7 Summit expressed her excitement for the new addition to the family but confessed she has yet had the opportunity to meet her niece, even over facetime, although she hoped she would meet Lilibet soon.

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Did you really think Meghan Markle and Prince Harry offended the Queen by naming newborn daughter Lilibet? - Kardashian Dish