Timothy Ogden
As a published author and editor, a managing director of a think tank, an executive partner, a regular commentator and speaker in conferences and panel events, and regularly working as a professor, one would think Tim Ogden is already fully engaged and busy. What would this fellow need to do besides his current schedule or much less time? Unfortunately, he doesn’t think so or agree; Ogden still has a hefty agenda of goals and tasks on his growing to-do list. While serving as an adjunct assistant professor at New York University, teaching urban planning might be his most stable and traditional career role; he is a man on fire. Ogden has personally authored or edited over 20 books on business thought and leadership, marketing, and innovation. He also writes regularly for Alliance magazine and the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR). Ogden provides executive management leadership for at least two major idea-generation organizations, the Financial Access Initiative at NYU and a separate leadership communication firm.
Getting Involved Versus Just Theory Creating
A critical side project of Timothy Ogden’s involves generating financial services for the world’s poor, intended to give them the tools to reach self-sustaining occupations and income generation. First seen in the form of micro-lending by institutions like Grameen Bank, the Financial Access Initiative led by Ogden is NYU’s answer to taking micro-financial tools for people with low incomes much further as a social influencing role in the developing world. This push to make developmental economics take off has been controversial, with some critics arguing that micro-lending hasn’t produced as much positive expected social improvement. Instead, Ogden is pivotal in arguing that the idea and practice have not yet reached complete evolution and maturity, holding the potential for much more, especially in reversing the downward effects of consolidated poverty.
A Library of Books is Not Enough
And when Tim Ogden is not running the above institutions and teaching, he’s not sitting idle. As noted earlier, Ogden generates massive business-related writing and speaks freely at multiple events and conferences on related topics. This is beyond any particular academic research he would typically generate in a professor role, already a standard expectation in higher education. Two of his more recent projects have been working as a co-author of Toyota Under Fire and writing and getting published his additional book, Experimental Conversations. In the latter, Ogden pulls together a vivid portfolio of modern-day financial thought from some of the most influential and cutting-edge economists discussing development economics. Ogden is also busy generating a third book project in a similar vein of thought and discussion but geared more toward the average person, Financial Inclusion: What Everyone Needs to Know.
