19 July 2011
Florida International University named business professor Jerry Haar as director of its Eugenio Pino and Family Global Entrepreneurship Center.
He was director of the Entrepreneurship Center’s Institute of Family Business and associate director of the Knight Ridder Center for Excellence in Management. He also teaches management and serves as dean for international programs at FIU's business school.
Haar said his priorities in the new post are to strengthen and expand the Pino Center and “achieve high quality and high visibility in all we do ---supporting the College’s academic program; providing professional education, training and technical assistance; and fostering applied research.”
Known as straight-talking, humorous and prolific, Haar is a frequent speaker at WorldCity events, regular contributor to periodicals and author of about a dozen books. His most recent books include “Can Latin America Compete?” co-authored with analyst John Price and “Small Firms, Global Markets.” He is now working on a book on entrepreneurship in Latin America with Esteban Brenes of INCAE Business School in Costa Rica.
His humurous style shines in a recent column for Miami Today, where he wrote from Oxford: "The dollar has about as much value as the Greek drachma in the age of the Euro, tempting me to visit the local branch of Barclay’s Bank to see about financing for a plate of fish and chips.”
Before joining FIU’s Knight Center team, Haar directed the Inter-American Business and Labor Program at the North-South Center at the University of Miami. He also has held visiting appointments at Wharton, Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, and the American Enterprise Institute. He was a research associate at Columbia University and a Fulbright Scholar at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas in Brazil.
He previously worked as director of Washington, D.C. programs for the Council of the Americas, a New York-based business association made up of more than 200 corporations with major investments in Latin America. In that role, he worked with business and government leaders.
Haar earned his bachelor’s degree from American University, master's from the Johns Hopkins University, and PhD from Columbia University. He also is also a graduate of Harvard University's Executive Program in Management and Health Finance.
In addition, he has served as a business consultant for such companies as ExxonMobil, Microsoft, Merck, ING, Ford, Disney and Heineken. He has been cited or appeared in media including The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, BusinessWeek, CNN, BBC and Fox Cable News.
At a WorldCity panel in January, he chided leaders of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Ecuador for weak economic stewardship. He joked: "Those are four countries, I believe, that can be more competently managed by any of the cast members of Jersey Shore," the raucous reality TV show.
For more information on the Pino Center, visit www.entrepreneurship.fiu.edu.