Ann Savage plants seeds for business success worldwide

By Cliff Newell

The Lake Oswego Review, May 6, 2010

Ann Savage combines travel and doing good through her affliation with CNFA.

CLIFF NEWELL / lake oswego review

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Ann Savage has Georgia on her mind.

Also Mongolia, Azerbaijan and Angola.

A life-long lover of travel, the long-time Lake Oswego resident really gets around the world. And as a volunteer for CNFA, Savage does a tremendous amount of good.

“The people are absolutely magnificent,” Savage said. “I love the travel. I get to go into offices and meet people and really get to know them. It’s a real pleasure for me.”

Savage did not figure on her retirement years being so un-retiring. After a long career as a business executive who specialized in small business development, she was looking forward to a long rest. She was wrong.

Savage said, “After I had been retired a month, I asked myself, ‘Oh my, why did I do that?’ “

Savage didn’t pussyfoot around. She joined the Peace Corps and a year later she found herself working in a bank in Mongolia. Once again, she asked herself, “Oh my, why did I do that?”

However, Savage was getting closer and closer to retirement satisfaction. The Peace Corps had a few drawbacks, but Savage found that she loved helping people in other nations discover better business practices.

“It was really very rewarding in Mongolia,” Savage said. “When I started there was one bank with nine employees. When I left in 2003 there were six branches and 45 employees.”

Savage was just getting started. Next on her agenda were trips to Azerbaijan (a nation on the Caspian Sea), Africa and Georgia, best known as the home country of Soviet Union dictator Josef Stalin. She showed a special capacity to help nations of the former Soviet Union find their way in the business world.

Georgia was found by Savage to be a country of great beauty, which she said is very similar to Oregon, and enormous potential, which she tried to unlock.

“It borders on not being a Third World country,” Savage said. “I was fortunate to work in the capitol, Tbilisi. I also saw the countryside and saw how the war of a couple years ago had affected it. Their farming practices are not good.”

Savage went about showing the Georgians better ways of planting, plowing, harvesting and getting their food to market.

“I probably made more recommendations than I should have,” Savage said, but she was pleased by the results.

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