Who we are

The professional staff of Partnership International, Inc. is multi-cultural and multilingual with extensive overseas experience. We believe in establishing a local presence in countries and markets of particular interest to our clients. By doing so, we work closely with local resources to identify and validate effective solutions, which are truly adapted to the needs of our clients in providing sustainable development.

Our Senior Partners and Technical Advisors have hands-on experience covering more than 50 countries. To meet our clients’ objectives, we have assembled at team of seasoned international professionals.

The senior advisors of Partnership International have :

• Complementary skills that will seamlessly deliver the quality and timely services required for a successful project implementation.
  
  
• Extensive experience in working in emerging countries at senior levels of both private and public enterprises and/or related governmental agencies responsible for regulatory, administrative, judicial and service programs.
  
  
• Know-how to instill transfer of best practices in all manners of legal, technical and professional environments.

• Infrastructure Investment & Restructuring Specialists
• Financial & Management Advisors
• Economists
• Legal and Regulatory Experts
• Environmental Specialists
• Accounting/Auditing Experts
• Privatization and Public-Private Partnership Experts

Our Principals
(click on name to see full biography)

Ian P. Brownlow
President, CEO

Mr. Ian P. Brownlow leads Partnership International, Inc. to help empower public and private sector clients in the creation of institutional, economic and financial strategies towards sustainable development. As President & CEO, Mr. Brownlow guides Partnership International, Inc. in providing best-practice solutions to clients such as the World Bank, U.S. government agencies, foreign governments and private companies.

Mr. Brownlow has managed numerous complex projects worldwide, requiring close coordination with consulting teams, public-sector partners, private-sector stakeholders and international financial institutions. He is a seasoned executive with over 20 years of professional experience in international project finance and leadership:

- Managed foreign exchange supply for the IFC and other development bank loans for sugar operations in Malawi
- Liaised with Boards of Directors for nine diverse operating regions including energy in the US and mining in Africa
- Consulted for the parastatal body responsible for marketing and distribution of agricultural produce in Malawi.
- Improved operations for a multi-million dollar joint venture South American oil and gas operating company project
- Turned around a loss-producing refinery into a product terminal facility and negotiated the sale of oil and gas assets for $150mn
- Headed due diligence efforts for acquisition of a billion-dollar property and mining group in Canada
- Directed sales of a glass manufacturing company and acquisition of a joint venture partnership in Germany
- Assisted the preparation of prospectus and advisor in government privatization of a major UK airline

Mr. Brownlow has worked with conglomerate executives at the highest corporate levels such as Tiny Rowland of Lonrho, Robert Anderson of Atlantic Richfield and Lord Michael Ashcroft of BHI Corporation. Earlier in his career, he worked with Ernst & Young in London and is qualified as a Chartered Accountant since 1984.

Gilles Foucher
VP, Finance & Operations

Mr. Gilles Foucher has over 30 years experience in both international finance and financial audits for both the public and private sector. At the World Bank from 1988-1991, Mr. Foucher was as an Audit Manager responsible for auditing World Bank project development around the world. He was in charge of the audit and control on how the project was managed and if the budget was used appropriately in accordance with the grant and the objective of the World Bank. He supervised audits concerning projects throughout Africa. Mr. Foucher has worked for over 30 years with IBM on a variety of assignments worldwide. At IBM, he was the Europe Middle East Africa (EMEA) Investment Manager where he assessed proposals for Strategic Alliances with IBM such as joint-ventures, subsidiary or equity partnerships and managed over USD 40 million. Over the last few years Mr. Foucher has been providing economic and finance advisory services. His most recent assignment was with the French Benchmarking Institute where he instructed small business enterprises on best practices and how to succeed as a small business enterprise. He also established for multinational businesses their “bid prices” for hardware and services in EU and subsidiaries located all around the world. Mr. Foucher was a Lecturer in Economics. He is a graduate from the Political Institute of Paris, and holds a M.A. In Economic Sciences form University of Paris and “Diplôme d'Etudes Supérieures de Doctorat” in Economic Sciences from University of Paris. Mr. Foucher is fluent in both French and English.

Tracy Mathieu
VP, Business Development

As a business development consultant for over 15+ years, Ms. Mathieu has extensive experience in developing, negotiating and managing strategic relationships from inception to implementation and/or completion.

Ms Mathieu has put together international collaborative deals for large-scale infrastructure projects and developments, multinational organizations and the Internet industry worldwide. She has planned and produced high-margin revenue business opportunities with new industries, companies and business partners. She has also designed and orchestrated multinational, tri-sectorial, and cross-boarder collaborative agreements. She recognizes opportunities via research and analysis, and presents these opportunities as new business concepts to executives with a plan for implementation. With international cross-sector, business development experience in over 55 countries, she thinks broadly and strategically about a broad range of business development issues oriented towards sustainable solutions. She holds a Bachelor's in International Relations with a concentration in Developing Countries' Economics as well as a Masters in Public Policy from Georgetown University.

Christine Vialettes
VP, Communications & Corporate Secretary

Christine Vialettes is Partnership International's Corporate Secretary and VP Communications. Prior to joining Partnership International, Ms. Vialettes worked at World Bank and IMF for over ten years providing administrative, marketing, and communications assistance to top executives of the World Bank’s African countries region and later for the Debt Department of the IMF. Ms Vialettes experience in marketing and commutations includes the American Institute of Banking, the British Chamber of Commerce and the Spanish Chamber of Commerce. She holds a Degree Superior from the "Institut des Attaches de Direction" and is fluent in French, Spanish and English.

G.Barry Schaeffer
Senior Advisor, Energy Financial Economist

Dr. Barry Schaeffer is Partnership International’s Energy Economist. He has over twenty years of experience in applied economics, financial analysis and research applied to renewable energy, and methodology for tariff determination. Areas of specialization include renewable energy connection to the grid, fiscal frameworks, energy modeling and project costing. Dr. Schaeffer has twelve years of experience in the financial aspects of electricity and public utilities. His expertise includes IAS restatement of accounts, financial analysis and modeling, business valuation, development of methodology and calculation of tariffs, cost of service studies, unbundling, restructuring, privatization, credit and loan repayment evaluation, financial management assessment, subsidy policy and risk analysis. Dr. Schaeffer has extensive experience worldwide from Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, to Africa, Asia and China.

Nasir Khattak
Senior Advisor, Renewable Energy

Mr. Nasir Khattak has over twelve years of experience in renewable energy and energy efficiency projected planning, promotion and development. He holds a Master of Engineering Management from The George Washington University (Focus on Environmental and Energy Management). His areas of specialization include sustainable energy program management, strategic and sustainable development planning, renewable energy and climate change policy development, and international outreach.

He is a consultant with the Climate Institute and founder of the Global Sustainable Energy Islands Initiative (GSEII). The GSEII was launched in 1998 as a consortium of international organizations to assist the small island states in their energy transformation efforts. His work includes development of sustainable energy plans in participating states and supporting the implementation of renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. These Sustainable Energy Plans detail policy, regulatory, financing, and capacity building measures for the increased utilization of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies and services. He promotes practical solutions through cooperative action, serving as a catalyst to public private partnerships.

Paul Boyne
Senior Advisor, Energy Sector Restructuring

Mr. Boyne has direct contract experience for Wind Farm development. He has worked directly for developers, construction companies, designers and OEM's in negotiating and implementing contracts. He has directed the design of such facilities in six different states in the U.S. He has expert level knowledge of Vesta and GE Wind contractual agreements. In addition, he has provided feasibility and financial reviews for funding organizations seeking to develop wind farm applications. He has overall application and installation experience of large-scale wind farm projects. In addition, he has expert knowledge of electrical grid interconnection, generation management and all technical matters relating to contractual agreements for such facilities. He is also knowledgeable of logistical aspects in delivering such components to remote locations and overall transportation related matters.

Paul Boyne has extensive experience in the Energy Sector worldwide. He also has over 25 years experience in power plant construction and operations. He has broad-base expertise in energy development of gas turbines, large steam turbines, generators, supercritical boilers, wind generators, associated support equipment, construction and operations. He holds a BS, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, and has completed Energy Sector development training from General Electric Company at Turbine University and Six Sigma Center.

Bryce Fisher
Senior Advisor, Transport Safety & Security

As a recognized safety and security expert, Bryce Fisher enables Partnership International's customers to address a wide range of issues facing transportation concerns in a holistic way. Known for his creative and strategic thinking, he can help develop frameworks and strategies to meet transportation organizations' immediate and emerging safety and security needs. Within his 30 years of experience in aviation, Mr. Fisher has worked with both State regulatory agencies and industry on four continents. Mr. Fisher has published a number of articles on safety issues that have been featured in the ICAO Journal, amongst others. Fluent in both French and English, Mr. Fisher’s customers included the World Bank, UTA French Airlines, Air France, the Governments of Niger, Mali, Madagascar and Canada. Mr. Fisher is currently writing a book for regulatory agencies on how to build risk management based oversight programs.

Benvindo Tavares Rodrigues
Senior Advisor, Private Sector Development

Mr. Rodrigues has over eighteen years of work experience, of which five in export/import management, ten managing private sector development and poverty alleviation projects funded by international financial institutions and donors (WB, IFAD, ADB, USAID, ADF, etc.) and three providing regional (Africa) business and management consulting services. He is able to conduct business in English, Portuguese, French, Spanish, and Russian. Mr. Rodrigues worked with the Southern Africa Department of the World Bank Group (performed financial analysis of a US$ 32 Million line of credit to support Mozambican small and medium size companies) and the Arizona Department of Commerce as trade specialist assistant for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East (helped to set up the state office in Europe) in 1993. He holds a Master of Business Administration (Finance and Trade) American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird), Certificate in Economics, Economics Institute, Boulder, Colorado, and a BA in Economics, Economics Institute, Minsk, Byelorussia. He is also skilled in designing and carrying out training activities, seminars, and workshops in his areas of expertise. He is fluent in English, Portuguese, and French.

Timothy Healy
Senior Advisor, Enviro & Socio-Economics

Mr. Healy has over 17 years of experience in the field of natural resources management and economics initiated in Europe and now over 14 years in Africa predominantly in Madagascar. Mr. Healy also worked in Europe as an environmental consultant within an international consultancy managing environmental and social impact assessments (ESIAs). Later he was an independent consultant attached to institutes of environmental research in Namibia (4 years). Since 1996, Mr. Healy specializes in SEIAs in various development sectors for both governments and the private sector. His consulting assignments cover a broad range of environmental issues: Environmental Economics, Management of the Environment, Project Appraisal, Environmental Systems, Marine and Estuarine Pollution & Water Resource Management, Tropical Ecology, Conservation, Environmental Chemistry, Ecology, Physical Basis of Ecosystems, Applied Ecology Information Technology, Environmental Damage, Environmental Geology, and Wildlife Management.

Sylvie Foucher
Senior Advisor, ICT Development

Ms. Foucher has extensive experience as an ICT project manager working in international settings for extended periods of time. Ms. Foucher is an experienced engineer and has expert knowledge about telecom technologies including VoIP and networks, working with customers, vendors and all project partners (network architecture, design, validation, deployment, operations and support).

Ms. Foucher has been working as a project manager for various telecom companies since 1990, including France Telecom where she oversaw and coordinated the management of residential VoiP projects for UK and subsidiaries in Europe and Africa. She was responsible for the functional and capacity evolutions of the VOIP platforms (500,000 customers) as well as for FT interface and support on UK VoIP residential projects. She was also a project manager at Colibri Solutions, a start-up specialized in computing and telecom convergence for small and medium-sized companies (IP-Centrex, voice and e-mail, IP phones). From 2003 to 2005, Ms. Foucher was an engineer consultant for Savoir - Faire & Cie where she prepared and promoted project management service proposals for integrators and telecom suppliers. Ms. Foucher also has an extensive experience at Nortel Networks, where she has worked for almost 12 years. There, she was project manager for Matra Networks Communications and drafted a plan for the development of new Nortel products in France, including industrialization processes for product mass-deployment (Optical line products).

Romeo Messier
Senior Advisor, ICT Enterprise Restructuring

Mr. Messier is a senior consultant and advisor at Partnership International, Inc. He is a senior executive with extensive experience in business planning, project management and many aspects of financial, operations and general management. His key qualifications are:

- An effective ICT leader with a strong customer and profit focus who creates and works in a results-oriented team environment.
- Diversified experience in directing, planning, performance and productivity measurement for operating budgets of more than $2.9 billion.
- Experienced in domestic and international ICT project management.
- Extensive experienced ICT accountant, public auditor and bookkeeper.

Among his many assignments include the development of a business plan for the Sri-Lanka Postal Service and the development and implementation of a model based on postal service activities resulting in a twenty percent profits to the assigned funds. He also has conducted a revision of the Bolivian Postal Service, which resulted in a restructuring and modernization plan, which is actually being implemented and developed a strategic plan for the Universal Postal Service in Bern, Switzerland. In Cape Verde, he was the Lead Marketing Expert for the Postal Service and Postal Banking.