Previous Fora / 2011
SAXENIAN, AnnaLee
Dean, Berkeley School of Information, University of California, Berkeley
AnnaLee Saxenian has made a career of studying regional economies and the conditions under which people, ideas, and geographies combine and connect into hubs of economic activity. Her latest book, The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy (Harvard University Press, 2006) explores how skilled immigrants from Silicon Valley have transferred the institutions of technology entrepreneurship to emerging regions in their home countries. The “brain drain,” she argues, has now become “brain circulation”— a powerful economic force for the development of formerly peripheral regions that is sparking profound transformations in the global economy.
Saxenian is professor and dean at the U.C. Berkeley School of Information and a professor in Berkeley’s department of city and regional planning. She is author of the acclaimed Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (Harvard, 1994). Her other monographs include Silicon Valley's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs (Public Policy Institute of California, 1999), and Local and Global Networks of Immigrant Professionals in Silicon Valley (PPIC, 2002). She holds a PhD in Political Science from MIT, a Master's in Regional Planning from U.C. Berkeley, and a BA in Economics from Williams College.