Private Sector; In My Briefcase/Jeffrey D. Sachs

By Peter Passell

Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Harvard Institute for International Development, spends roughly one-third of his life on the road, giving lectures and troubleshooting the institute's economic development projects from Indonesia to southern Africa. This day, he packed light for the flight back to Boston from Jacksonville, Fla., but included a lot of reading material in his briefcase, ''in case we get stuck on the runway.''

The adapter plug ''I take everywhere,'' he said. ''You can plug it into an airport phone anywhere in the world and read your E-mail.'' And the ballpoint pens are ''no-name cheapos -- I'd lose anything good in a minute.'' Indeed, conspicuously missing is his beloved Psion electronic organizer, which he used to fiddle with during dull meetings. ''I left it on an airplane,'' he lamented.

Topping his reading list is ''Consilience'' by Edward O. Wilson, the sociobiologist. (''Everyone at

the institute is reading Wilson right now,'' he said.) But the list also includes ''Interactions of Desertification and Climate'' and ''Roll Back Malaria'' because, he said, ''Africa's on my mind.''

He likes his black canvas briefcase because it is ''flexible enough to be stuffed.''