New York, N.Y., July 17, 2019 – The USCIB Foundation, Inc., an educational and research foundation affiliated with the United States Council for International Business (USCIB), today announced the launch of Business Partners for Sustainable Development (BPSD).

BPSD will create new international public-private partnerships in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It will provide a framework for government, business and civil society to share information, resources, activities and capabilities, and work in collaboration to achieve objectives together that the sectors cannot achieve independently. BPSD will facilitate partnerships, identify creative solutions, leverage proven strategies, measure progress and report results.

All BPSD initiatives will be based on four pillars of partnership:

• Inclusion: Bringing together all stakeholders to establish accountability, shared risk and mutually beneficial objectives.
• Innovation: Fostering forward thinking, collaborative solutions and imaginative partnership strategies for implementation.
• Influence: Leveraging thought leadership and digital resources to promote the role, explain the benefits and achieve the impact of multisector engagement on achieving the SDGs.
• Impact: Adapting or developing credible techniques for measuring, monitoring and evaluating the impact of public private partnerships.

“We want BPSD to be an important step forward in facilitating successful and impactful public private partnerships to achieve the SDGs,” According to Michael Michener, USCIB’s vice president for product policy and innovation.

Dr. Scott Ratzan will serve as executive director of BPSD. Ratzan will serve in a part-time leadership role developing the strategic priorities for the center, directing its initial activities and advancing the visibility of the BPSD within multilateral organizations and the U.S. government.

“Scott Ratzan brings extensive experience and keen insight for setting the future direction of BPSD to achieve the SDGs,” stated USCIB President and CEO Peter Robinson. “I am honored to join in a leadership capacity to advance this important mission,” said Ratzan. BPSD will be a leader and an innovator in advancing successful and impactful public private partnerships to achieve the SDGs.”

Ratzan recently served as senior fellow at Mossavar Rahmani Center for Business & Government, Harvard Kennedy School. He has multi-sector program experience with AB InBev, Johnson & Johnson, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and a number of leading academic institutions.

At Harvard, Ratzan led a team where he developed Guiding Principles for Multisector Engagement for Sustainable Health, building upon experience from a number of partnerships he pioneered including Together for Safer Roads, Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action, Global Smokefree Worksite Challenge. and the Global Smart Drinking Goals. Ratzan also served as CoChair of the UN Secretary General’s Every Woman Every Child Innovation Working Group, as Vice Chair of the Business Industry Advisory Council’s Health Committee to the OECD and also on the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Health & Well-being.

About The USCIB Foundation, Inc.: Since 1980, The USCIB Foundation has been dedicated to a single mission: advancing the benefits of a free market economy and promoting the essential role of the private sector in stimulating economic growth and progress in social development. Today, the Foundation pursues that mission through a portfolio of initiatives that strives to inform future choices made by stakeholders and policy makers that benefit people around the world.

About USCIB: USCIB promotes open markets, competitiveness and innovation, sustainable development and corporate responsibility, supported by international engagement and regulatory coherence. Its members include U.S.-based global companies and professional services firms from every sector of our economy. As the U.S. affiliate of several leading international business organizations, USCIB provides business views to policy makers and regulatory authorities worldwide, and works to facilitate international trade and investment.