The Global Impact Study

Amy Mahan (1961–2009)

Amy Mahan served on the Global Impact Study’s Research Working Group since the project’s inception a year and a half ago. She made key contributions to the conception and design of our research effort, helped shape its focus, hypotheses and methodology.

Throughout her work, most notably as a leader of the Learning Initiative on Reforms for Network Economies (LIRNE.net), Amy saw public access to information technology first and foremost as an instrument for social and economic inclusion. She dedicated her life and scholarship to understanding how information and communication technologies could best enable excluded people, women in particular, to improve their lives and strengthen their communities. In her passion for helping others, Amy believed that action had to go hand-in-hand with research and that effective programs could only be built upon solid understanding rooted in rigorous study. As it emerges from its formative first year, the Global Impact Study reflects Amy’s commitment and owes a great debt to her insights.

Amy left us on March 5th, 2009, at age 47. She worked with us until the end and left suddenly, taking many of her friends and colleagues by surprise. Amy had told very few people about her cancer, refusing to let the illness define her and, we suspect, fearful this might have distracted us from focusing on a project she cared very much about. She wanted to be remembered instead by her ideas, her scholarship, her dedication to help others. As we move forward, we will do our best to honor her memory by making sure the Global Impact Study remains true to her beliefs and worthy of her high standards. Plans are also underway, in coordination with other IDRC research programs in which she played key roles, to create a research fellowship in Amy’s name.