The wall of Janet Leno’s office at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., is covered in photos of people from around the world she has met and helped throughout the years.
These people, many of whom are less fortunate and have struggled living with HIV/AIDS, serve as inspiration to the Milwaukee native, who is a senior AIDS specialist with the World Bank Global HIV/AIDS program in Washington D.C.
In her position, Leno works to “provide support to developing countries in efforts to develop strategic planning for HIV/AIDS.”
“Our clients are many,” Leno said, which was demonstrated by the fact that on the day of our interview, Leno had e-mail messages in her inbox from several countries, including the island of Dominica, Ethiopia, Mongolia, Burundi, Albania, and Syria.
“We are working everywhere,” Leno said. “My job is to work with the countries to see how we can best help them and find specialists to work with them to develop operational plans” to deal with the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Leno said requests for help are almost always urgent, and therein lies one of the greatest challenges of her work, which is “trying to provide good, quality service in a very short time,” she said.
The World Bank, according to its Web site, provides assistance to countries in need around the world, offering financial and technical aid. Its headquarters is in Washington, though it has 10,000 employees in more than 100 offices around the world.
That international environment is one of the things Leno enjoys most about her position at the bank. “I have colleagues from all over the world,” she said. She shares her office with people from Zambia, Morocco, and Cambodia, among many other countries.
Leno, 59, was born on the west side of Milwaukee. Her family lived in Whitefish Bay, and then moved to Bayside, where she attended Nicolet High School.
Leno fondly remembers her experience with B’nai B’rith Girls, and her service as the president of Haverim BBG when she was a sophomore. She was also an AZA Sweetheart.
Leno laughed when she talked about a recent visit to her parent’s home in Mequon, where she again tried on the dress she wore to the Sweetheart dance.
Leno says her family has helped her become what she is today.
“I think the most important thing is that my parents were just always willing to support me whenever I said I wanted to try something new,” she said. “They provided a really important sense of security that allowed me to do a lot of things.”
Leno said she visits her parents, who divide their time between Mequon and Florida, about once a month.
After Nicolet, Leno attended the University of Wisconsin, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in social work. From there, she went to Boston University, where she earned a master’s degree in social work, with a concentration in community organization and social policy.
After a stint working for Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Department of Public Welfare, Leno answered her internal call to see more of the world. In 1976, without a job, she moved to Paris, where she eventually took a position working in early childhood education with the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and then UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).
Further refining her interest, Leno later earned a master’s degree in public policy at University of California, Berkeley and worked for the Council of State Governments-West, where she focused on energy and mineral developments issues.
“I realized those were not my main interests,” she said, “and I wanted to work on social issues.” So Leno moved to Washington.
Deciding she wanted to do international work, she joined the World Bank in 1986 in the education sector and, in 1998, she moved to Ghana with her husband, Peter Harrold, who is director for operations policy with the bank.
Leno continued her education work until 2000, when she took a leave of absence from the bank. She went to work for a non-governmental organization, ActionAid International, which is where her work with HIV/AIDS began.
Leno eventually came back to the bank and moved to Sri Lanka in 2002, where she was the country coordinator for her program for Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
Later that same year, she came back to Washington, where she started her current position. Now she travels much less, aside from meetings in Africa and Europe a couple of times per year.
Though she has traveled and lived all over the world, Leno said that the friendliness of the people in Milwaukee still stands out to her, and she loves the natural beauty of the city, especially in the summer.
“I really feel lucky to have grown up in Milwaukee, even if I am very far away physically, as it is always in my heart.”
Erin Cohen is a former assistant editor of The Chronicle.
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