Helena Grunfeld

Following a career spanning over 30 years in the information and communication (ICT) sector, mainly in Australia, working for the incumbent telecommunications operator Telstra, and participating in the establishment of a new carrier, Uecomm, Helena has more recently combined her interest in ICT and development. She has also worked as an independent consultant in the sector, as an associate consultant with Ovum, where she co-authored a book on number portability and as a consultant with the International Telecommunications Union on a project with the telecommunications regulator in Timor-Leste.

She enrolled for a PhD in ICT for development (ICT4D) in 2006, focussing on developing a framework for understanding how ICT can contribute to development. The framework was tested at iREACH, an ICT4D project in Cambodia, funded by the Canadian International Development Research Centre.  During and following the completion of her PhD research, Helena participated in other iREACH activities and extended her involvement in Cambodia to other organisations with activities in Cambodia, including Community Links Cambodia, a Melbourne based organisation assisting poor farmers in the district of Mesang, Prey Veng Province.

Helena has an undergraduate degree from the School for Social Work and Public Administration in Lund, Sweden, completed a Master of Business Administration at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 1989, and a PhD at the Centre for Strategic Economic Studies (CSES), Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia, in 2011. She is now an adj. fellow at CSES and an adj research fellow at the Chea Sim University of Kamchaymear in Cambodia.