AS IS ALWAYS the case whenever he has to get anywhere, Spencer King has allowed plenty of extra time to navigate the traffic-choked streets of Cairo. So it’s no surprise that King appears unruffled as he strides into the lobby of the Four Seasons, one of Egypt’s most lavish hotels. This, after all, is a man accustomed to dealing with the quirks and vagaries that make each of the countries in which he’s lived and worked unique. In Cairo, the city King has called home since 1999, the quirk is traffic.

For more than a decade, Spencer King has been employed by the International Executive Service Corps (IESC), the world’s largest not-for-profit business-development organization. Funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), IESC helps to develop strong private sectors in emerging countries, which in turn, according to IESC materials, "help to reduce poverty, promote self-determination, and ensure global stability." Because Egypt is home to more than half of the world’s antiquities, tourism is one of the critical keys to the country’s development. In his time here, King has worked both on the IESC’s tourism initiative and in the information-technology and food-processing sectors. Previously, he spent four years in Sri Lanka working on a technology initiative.

But Spencer King’s roots extend well beyond Asia and the Near East. Born and raised in New England, King still keeps a house on Cape Cod, to which he retreats as often as his cluttered schedule will allow. And soon, he’ll call Washington, DC, home; IESC is ceasing its operations — which King calls "cyclical" in each country — in Egypt, and he will return to the US, where he’ll take on an expanded role in operations and programs with the organization.

Q: Why is IESC’s program ending in Egypt?

A: Well, this is a decision that [US]AID makes in countries. For instance, I was in Sri Lanka just before I came back here two years ago, and we had one of the most successful programs ever there, according to AID, but they have a 10-year rule, and they can waive it if they want to, but they decided not to. And now we’ve started a small program in Sri Lanka, and we should start a larger one next year. And I would suspect they’ll do the same thing [in Egypt]. This is cyclical. There are a lot of variables we have no control over. From our standpoint, I think we’ve had a great run here over 26 years, and we’ll be back, probably within the next three years.

Q: Tell me about IESC.

A: IESC is a not-for-profit volunteer organization, about 35 years old, and they primarily work in the business community in developing countries. The goal is to raise the standard of living of the average citizen in each country, so that they enjoy some of the fruits of economic growth. I mean, some people can endure some pain during their lifetime, but if they have no hope for their children and grandchildren, it becomes grim.

IESC is spending a lot of money and time doing firm-level assistance to bring individual companies and sectors up to world-competitive standards, otherwise they can’t export. Or, in the tourist business, [if] they have a less-than-quality product, that will cut down on their return visits, as well as the amount of money they can charge, so it’s not smart to depend upon cheap labor; it’s better to actually have good quality, service, customer satisfaction, and some long-term strategies.

Q: What’s your specific role within IESC?

A: My role here in Egypt has been to be CEO of the Center for Business Support. I’m also the regional vice-president for the Middle East and Asia, so my territory is fairly large. We have programs in Jordan and Sri Lanka, smaller programs in Lebanon, Tunisia, one’s starting up in Morocco, maybe Indonesia. I’ll be relocating back to the United States, to the DC area, to be senior vice-president for the worldwide network, which will include both operations and programs, so my territory will be a little bit more expanded. With our history, that’s not really that daunting, because we’ve completed about 25,000 projects in 120 countries, so we have a good, traditional history of not-for-profit, non-biased but high-quality volunteer executive-service work. And of course we have excellent trained staff.

Q: Do you consider Egypt misunderstood as a tourist destination?

A: Yes. I mean, people think of Egypt as a tourist destination perhaps correctly. They have a lot of cultural tourism, and people who [scuba dive] understand where Sharm El Sheikh is. [But] certainly it’s been misunderstood in terms of the accessibility, in terms of safety, in terms of the money and the commitment that the government and agencies like the US Agency for National Development have made to improving the quality, and even things like food safety. So we’ve spent a lot of money trying to enhance that [tourism] sector, because it creates jobs — there’s a need for 600,000 to 700,000 new jobs a year — it creates foreign-exchange earnings, and it’s one of the few sectors that can work successfully, even in the high-tech end, in a sense, in the rural areas. So from that standpoint, we sort of push tourism more than the others, although we’re [also] in food processing, and we do some IT work, and in the past we did work with textile people. Right now, we’re primarily, at the recommendation of USAID, focusing on those three sectors.

Every country is different. If you go into Sri Lanka, we’re getting involved in clusters like spices and rubber products that are indigenous to that particular culture.

Q: How has tourism in Egypt been affected since September 11?

A: The overall perception of where Egypt is — I keep saying that Americans generally have two problems: they’re very fuzzy on geography, and they don’t take a second language. So after 9/11 ... first of all, even now, there’s a 75 percent reduction in US tourism. Mostly, as you know, US tourists don’t want to fly anywhere. So that’s one thing. The Europeans have picked up some of the slack, because of the charter tourists coming in, but I think there’s still a perception that we’re in the midst of the Iraqi invasion.

So Egypt has suffered tremendously, even though they were a close strategic partner to the US. Immediately after 9/11, for instance, the [American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt (AmCham)] went over to pay a condolence call on the US government, and we are considered perhaps the leading business organization for AmCham in the Middle East. There’s not any anti-Americanism [in Egypt], certainly toward individual Americans. There may be anti-Americanism toward US policy, toward the perception that we maybe favor one country over another. But not towards Americans.

Overall they’ve been misunderstood, and 9/11 sort of has put a veil — pardon the pun — over being able to see it clearly. [But] as people keep coming back, they realize we have not seen anywhere near the effects that people have surmised we might feel.

Q: What do you miss about your home on Cape Cod when you’re in Egypt?

A: I love the idea that I can go out on the back porch and see the ocean and it’s quiet and I can think a little bit, breathe fresh air, drive into Boston in an hour and 15 minutes. Things work, there’s a certain predictability. It may be interesting to be a tourist and have it be unpredictable, but living day in and day out, it kind of gets old. So, yeah, I miss it. I was born in Hartford, I was born and brought up in the Northeast, so it’s great to get back there.

Q: What do you think you’ll miss most about Egypt when you’re back in the States?

A: One thing, I think, is the diversity. I mean, there really is a diverse culture here. Certainly the weather. There’s a good climate year-round. And if you can get down to Luxor and take a [Nile] cruise, well, I don’t think there’s a better thing to do here. I’d take that every weekend if I could. That to me is great, to be able to go along the river and look at the water buffalo with wooden plows — it’s like a thousand years ago. You can never possibly come close to absorbing even a small percentage of the culture. You’re talking 7000 years, not 300 years.

Q: You were back in Boston for the opening of "Quest for Immortality" at the Museum of Science. What did you think?

A: I love the idea that it’s the largest show ever of Egyptian artifacts, even larger than "King Tut" or "Ramses," and secondly, I love the fact that it’s going to 10 different venues in five years. I mean, this to me is wonderful, wonderful exposure to Egypt that you hear about when you’re children in school, but to go there and see it, in all these different venues, is going to be spectacular.

We have 50 percent of all the antiquities in the world in this one country. It’s very easy to get around the country. The facilities need to be improved; they need to not have a monopoly with some of the transportation systems — I think that’ll help. I think the Egyptian-owned-and-operated hotels have come a long way in the last few years; they’ve really grabbed on to the idea that they have to be competitive.

Q: Any final messages you’d like to send back to the US about Egypt or IESC?

A: We’re already trying to replicate this program, particularly the tourism sector, in other developing countries, because almost all developing countries have some aspect of tourism; they don’t have all this agriculture, or textiles, or semiprecious stones like Sri Lanka, or rubber products, but they have something to do with tourism. So we think this is an easy-access sector to enhance the overall lifestyle and individual hopes and aspirations of the culture, so they can feel proud and still offer hope to their children. And this is what we’re trying to do here.

For information on the International Executive Service Corps, visit www.iesc.org. Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com