Bureaucratic systems are not set up to be what we refer to as human service organizations. They were established to collect revenue and maintain law and order and they used a law and order approach in providing family planning services.

It's very important in a leadership role not to place your ego at the foreground and not to judge everything in relationship to how your ego is fed.

We have emphasized the importance of applied action research because it allows evidence-based policy and program development and a focus on learning. We are also committed to using a participatory approach in which local people, local program managers and providers, local researchers, women's health activists, and national decision-makers play the leading role. International "experts" from technical assistance agencies or universities can make important contributions, but they certainly don't have all the answers.

We hope to organize team residencies and a conference bringing together professionals from Latin America and from other groups around the world who are also focusing on this issue. We want to bring them together so we can learn from each other, and then widely publicize our conclusions.

One of the things we have learned in the first year is that if you want to scale-up, the first thing you have to do is to expand your own team.

I often say that shareholders should feel very responsible for how responsive corporations are to the public trust.

When we conducted focus group interviews in the first municipality in Brazil before initiating the pilot project, a woman commented: Getting an appointment in the public sector municipal health services is like "winning the lottery." I would like to make it possible for many women and men in Latin America to win the lottery and receive the type of reproductive health services they so urgently need.