Foreign Service/Diplomacy Alpha International Consulting Chairman Africa

Seth D. Kaplan is a business consultant to companies in developing countries as well as a foreign policy analyst.

His book, Fixing Fragile States: A New Paradigm for Development (Praeger, 2008), critiques current Western policies in fragile states and lays out a new approach to overcoming the problems they face—an approach that gives due weight to sociopolitical conditions, governance systems, human resource constraints, and investment environments. His articles on countries as varied as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bolivia, and China have appeared in a wide variety of journals and newspapers, including the Washington Quarterly, Orbis, the Journal of Democracy, Policy Review, the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, the Jerusalem Post, and China Business Review.

A Wharton MBA, Kaplan has worked with several large multinational corporations, including Procter & Gamble and Compaq Computers. During his seven years in Shanghai, he founded four companies. As CEO of the largest of these, China College Management, Inc., he developed a chain of proprietary universities in east China.

Kaplan is currently the Chairman of Alpha International Consulting, Limited, which helps corporations tailor their strategies and operations to fit the challenging conditions found in developing countries. For instance, Alpha has established and managed the Asian subsidiaries of a major American company, advised a major European company on prospective markets and joint venture partners in China, and helped a bank plan its entry into Nigeria. Clients have included Morgan Stanley, Compaq Computers, Toshiba, and Brainpop.com. Alpha also specializes in obtaining difficult-to-acquire licenses and organizing all aspects of human resources and management systems for companies unfamiliar with local conditions in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Kaplan has lived and worked in Nigeria, Turkey, Japan, China, Taiwan, Israel, France, and the United States. He speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.

He resides in New York.