Dr. Llewellyn D. Howell is the Risk Management and Southeast Asia Specialist for Navigate International and is Senior Analyst for Howell International, a Political Risk Management consulting company. Dr. Howell has had numerous consulting and lecturing assignments in the U.S. and abroad. His specialization is the assessment of political and social climates for Foreign Direct Investment. He provides country and political risk assessments for investors interested in potential business in Southeast Asia.
Dr. Howell spent a sabbatical year at Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs (CFIA) in 1999-2000 where he completed work on a book on political risk assessment and worked with the managers of the PANDA Event Data Project. His special interest was in monitoring political violence as it affects FDI. He has since given considerable attention in his consulting, research, and writing to the rise of terrorism and its effects on business operations in both emerging and established markets.
From 2001 to 2003, Dr. Howell was the Director of the Vietnam Executive M.B.A. Program in Hanoi, Vietnam, for the University of Hawaii’s College of Business Administration. He was also Senior Research Scholar at the Pacific Asia Management Institute. Dr. Howell has consulted for the U.S. Department of State, the Foreign Service Institute, the Interamerican Development Bank, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Thunderbird Management Center, the Business Council for International Understanding, USIA, EurOrient Merchant Bank, the Malaysian Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore Technologies Corporation, and many multinational corporations. He also lectures and consults on the methodology of such assessments. He provides cross-cultural communications seminars for the Intercultural Business Center (IB-C) for businesses dealing with Asian culture.
Dr. Howell is Professor Emeritus of International Management at Thunderbird — The Garvin School of International Management in Glendale, Arizona. He teaches courses on Foreign Direct Investment:
Country and Political Risk Analysis and the Regional Business Environment of Asia, focusing on political and operations risk in the region. He was a Professor and administrator at Thunderbird from 1991 to 2001, where he lectured and provided Executive Education programs in the areas of Country and Political Risk Analysis and the Regional Business Environments of Asia.
Outside of academe, Dr. Howell interned at the U.S. Department of State in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research/Southeast Asia (1966). In 1978-79, he was the recipient of a NASPAA Faculty Fellowship, pending the year as an analyst in the Office of Secretary of Defense (Program Analysis and Evaluation). From July 1984 to August 1986, Dr. Howell worked as Senior Research Associate at Third Point Systems in Monterey, California. There, Dr. Howell specialized in database design and development, analytical applications such as in Indicators and Warnings Systems (I&W) and political risk for foreign investors, and the production of client-requested strategic analyses. In 1987-88 he was assigned to the Centre for International Relations and Strategic Studies, National Institute of Public Administration, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as a Fulbright Scholar where he provided civil service training in foreign policy analysis, political risk assessment, and strategic studies.
From 1974 to 1991 Dr. Howell was Professor of International Relations and Interim Chair of the Department of Comparative and Regional Studies at the School of International Service, The American University, Washington, D.C. Dr. Howell taught for three years at the University of Hawaii before moving to The American University.
Dr. Howell began his work in the field of international relations as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Malaya (later Malaysia), from 1963 to 1965, where he taught science and mathematics. He subsequently completed an M.A. at Florida State University (1967) and a Ph.D. at Syracuse University (1973), both in Political Science with a focus on International Relations. He has performed related coursework at The Sorbonne, Cornell University, and the University of Michigan and has conducted field research on foreign policy attitudes in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia.
Dr. Howell is author/editor of The Handbook of Country and Political Risk Analysis, now in its Third Edition (2001) and of Political Risk Assessment: Concept, Model, and Management (2001). He has co-edited two books, Malaysian Foreign Policy: Issues and Perspectives (1990), and International Education: The Unfinished Agenda (1984), has written and edited several monographs, and has written more than 100 published journal articles and numerous professional papers. He is currently writing a book on political risk and terrorism.
Since 1991, Dr. Howell has been the International Affairs Editor of USA Today Magazine. He is Senior Adviser for Methodology to The PRS Group, Inc., a country risk forecasting company and he is the President of Howell International, Inc., a political risk consulting firm.
He received is B.Sc. degree from SUNY Brockport in 1963 and his M.A. in International Affairs from Florida State University in 1967. Dr. Howell earned his Ph.D. from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University in 1973. He has received program certificates from the Harvard Management Development Program (1996) and USC’s Pacific Rim Management Program (1997).
Dr. Howell is married to Susana G. Howell, an editorial consultant and former Managing Editor of theThunderbird International Business Review and former Editor of Monterey Life magazine. She is now employed at Thunderbird in the Development Office. His son, Joseph, is a recent graduate of Arizona State University and now works as a Corrections Officer for the State of Arizona.