Mike Saint to Speak at World Bank Sustainability Summit

Online, June 13, 2013 (Newswire.com) - P. Michael Saint, the chairman and chief executive of The Saint Consulting Group, will speak at the International Finance Corporation's Sustainability Summit in Washington, D.C., bringing the niche of land use politics to a World Bank forum on building constituencies and understanding priorities.

Mike, who founded Saint Consulting in 1983, will be part of a Sustainability Exchange discussion of tools and approaches to working with 'smallholders' and stakeholders on Wednesday, June 19, at 4 pm at the IFC headquarters at 2121 Pennsylvania Ave.

The IFC Sustainability Summit, running June 19-21, is part of the seventh annual Sustainability Exchange, which the IFC sponsors as part of the World Bank Group. This year's theme is "Dealing with Uncertainty: How companies can identify and deal with uncertainty, especially in difficult operational contexts, and prepare themselves for the challenges that will take place over the next 10 years."

Mike founded Saint Consulting on the premise that all politics is local, and the company has shaped political campaign strategies and tactics to help businesses assess and manage political risk in the planning process. In more than 1,700 complex land use battles across all property and industry sectors, The Saint Consulting Group has incorporated basic political due diligence into building constituencies and understanding priorities for communities facing change in land use.

This approach is explained in "NIMBY Wars: The Politics of Land Use," a book co-authored by Mike Saint, Patrick Fox, the president of Saint Consulting, and Robert Flavell, the vice chairman of Saint Consulting. It sets out a unique political campaign path, beginning with political due diligence in the local community, to scope out and identify community stakeholders, the objections that need to be mitigated, the opposition that needs to be neutralized and the latent support that needs to be rallied and brought together to leverage effectively on decision makers and elected officials.

Mike will speak in a breakout session on building constituencies and understanding their priorities with David Bonbright, chief executive of ConVox, who has spent three decades working at the interface of business, civil society and government in Africa, Asia and Latin America. His most recent venture, Keystone Accountability, is the leader in bringing a data-driven approach to the inclusion of constituent feedback in social development.

The International Finance Corporation is an international financial institution that offers investment, advisory, and asset management services to encourage private sector development in developing countries. The IFC is a member of the World Bank Group and is headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1956 as the private sector arm of the World Bank Group to advance economic development by investing in strictly for-profit and commercial projects which reduce poverty and promote development.