Mike Laflin, an EDC senior vice president, works in the International Development Division where he focuses on developing private sector initiatives, especially those using information and communication technologies in the poorest countries to provide skills and knowledge to hard-to-reach populations.
Laflin began working overseas in 1972 in Kenya, where he wrote and directed educational radio broadcasts for Kenya’s schools. Since then he has directed several U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) global projects as well as designed and managed interactive radio instruction programs in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Most recently, he has worked with radio projects in Zambia and Sudan that are providing basic education to areas where poverty and remote circumstances mean that conventional schools are not available. Laflin also helped develop a network of rural radio stations in Liberia in the 1980s and was one of the designers of the Sudan Radio Service.
Laflin holds a master of arts in rural sociology from the University of Reading and a bachelor of education from the University of Birmingham, both in the United Kingdom.