Seeing the big picture

From Armenia to Zambia and 40 other countries in between, Margaret Bishop’s career history is a richly woven tapestry of diverse cultures, professional challenges, and foreign lands. A global business consultant fluent in five languages, Bishop (MSM ’85) has served in developed and emerging markets worldwide, tailoring her trade and economic development advice to regional needs.

Now, Bishop can add the scorching deserts of south central Iraq to her resume. As a civilian economic advisor to several of the region’s Provincial Reconstruction Teams, Bishop spent from spring to fall of 2007 helping?to reinvigorate a landscape that once bustled with factory workers, farmers, and tourists.

“I found the Iraqi officials and business leaders with whom I worked to be bright, well-educated, hard-working individuals — but they told me they had largely lived in an information vacuum for years,” says Bishop, now back in San Francisco finalizing her memoir, Now I Can Sit With the Old Men.

“They hungered for information on current methods and approaches to doing business,” she says. “The greatest value I brought was experience and knowledge from the outside world.”

A Midwesterner by birth, Bishop earned a bachelor of science degree in textile technology from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, then worked in manufacturing and quality assurance positions for U.S. textile industry giant Milliken and Company.

Once at Purdue, Bishop spent a year studying consumer economics before changing direction. “I had a highly technical academic and work background and felt it important to complement my technical knowledge with business fundamentals,” she says. So off she went to Krannert.

After graduation, Bishop took jobs in consumer packaged-goods marketing and marketing research. But she longed to work abroad and soon was plotting a course toward West Africa. “At that point in time most companies were unwilling to place women overseas,” she says. To gain entrée, she served two years as a business adviser and Peace Corps volunteer.

There, surrounded by palm trees and sand dunes, Bishop honed her international business skills while learning to speak Bambara. That experience became the first of many global pit stops for the independent contractor.

In Iraq, Bishop put her multicultural experiences to work in counseling business and government leaders on manufacturing, agriculture, agribusiness, and, surprisingly to many Westerners, religious- and archeology-based tourism.

“Progress is slow, but when I left I was seeing the beginnings of some positive change from the work I did,” she says. “With the help of my degree from Krannert, I’m able to stand back and look at the big picture as well as the small details.”

— Angie Roberts