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Bloggers
David Dollar, a US national, worked for five years as the World Bank’s Country Director for China and Mongolia in the East Asia and Pacific Region. In July 2009, after 20 years at the Bank, he started a new position representing the United States Treasury in Beijing. (Read his farewell blog post here.)
Before becoming Country Director, Mr. Dollar worked as Director for the development research department of the World Bank, overseeing the Bank’s research on the investment climate and growth. He co-authored World Bank reports on Globalization, Growth, and Poverty and Assessing Aid. His earlier work focused on aid and growth, and the determinants of the success and failure of reform programs supported by structural adjustment lending. He has been a key World Bank spokesperson on investment climate, globalization, and the effectiveness of aid.
Mr. Dollar joined the Bank in 1989 as an Economist in the Asia Region. He worked as the country economist for Vietnam through 1995. He advised the economic leaders of that country during a period of stabilization and transition to a market economy, and prepared the first World Bank country assistance strategies to support that transition.
Prior to joining the Bank, Mr. Dollar was on the faculty of the Department of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles; he has published widely in the areas of productivity growth, technology transfer, and development in East Asia. As a professor, he spent a semester teaching at the Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. He has a PhD in economics from New York University and a B.A. in Chinese history and language from Dartmouth College.
I'm an odd bird at the World Bank - a wildlife biologist working as the Senior Biodiversity Specialist in our East Asia and Pacific Region.
If I were fabulously rich I'd probably still be doing something similar to what currently fills most of my time - but without the bureaucracy. My first research was on ducks' sense of smell and my second paper was on the mating display of the Blue Duck.
I moved from waterfowl to primates for my PhD, studying the endangered Kloss gibbon (and the people) on remote Siberut Island, west of Sumatra. That unwittingly set the course for the rest of my life in terms of commitment to our region. That also resulted in my first 'popular' book; for nearly 20 years I had one or more books on the go. With gibbons behind me, I began work as Advisor in the Centre of Environmental Studies at the University of North Sumatra. Seeing the capacity problems facing environmental management in Indonesia, I initiated a series of major ecology books on different areas of Indonesia.
Over the following 12 years - most of those in Indonesia - I wrote three of the volumes (on Sumatra, Sulawesi, and Java and Bali) while employed by Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. During the ten years living in Indonesia I became very involved with freshwater fish and also land snails and ended up writing books on those too. Meanwhile I consulted for most of the major development agencies on land settlement, indigenous people, forest issues, and biodiversity. I came into the Bank through being a consultant for its independent evaluations arm working in Malaysia and Indonesia on land settlement and transmigration. I joined the Bank in 1995.
My World Bank work is of three types: support to others' projects on habitat policy issues, regional initiatives, and my own conservation projects in Mongolia, China, Indonesia, etc. The first of these I find very stimulating and satisfying; seeking to find practical and sustainable solutions while allowing the projects to deliver their benefits. My regional initiatives have sought to fill important gaps and to get Bank imprimatur on important topics and approaches that were not commonly supported. These have included publications etc on:
the largely ignored biodiversity of limestone systems especially caves which have had interesting operational implications
freshwater biodiversity, especially on wild fish which are economically important, especially to poor riparians.
local-language fieldguides - we now tally 111 volumes
faiths and environment, an initiative which has led to a number of interesting developments
I work on financial sector development issues in the East Asia & Pacific region for the World Bank. I have been working on a variety of policy issues, from state-owned banking reform to capital market development across many of the countries in the region, including Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.
I joined the World Bank in 2002, first joining for a brief period as a consultant with the Financial Sector Development Department in the Europe and Central Asia Region. I then moved to the World Bank office in Hanoi, Vietnam in 2003 and returned to Washington, DC to take on a more regional portfolio in 2005. My prior professional experience was with the U.S. Treasury Department on economic and financial sanctions compliance, inspections, and enforcement, and with the U.S. State Department working on foreign policy towards Egypt and North Africa. I have a graduate degree from the Kennedy School of Harvard University and an undergraduate degree from James Madison University. To summarize my personal background – I am a native Washingtonian, I live in Arlington, Virginia, I am married with two young daughters, and enjoy any kind of boating.
Louis Kuijs works since September 2004 as Senior Economist in the World Bank’s China office on macroeconomic issues, conducting macroeconomic analysis and policy dialogue. He is the main author of the Bank’s China Quarterly Update.
Previously, he worked at the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC, in the European Department and, before that, in the African, and Fiscal Affairs Departments.
Before joining the IMF in 1997, he worked at Oxford Economic Forecasting (Oxford, UK), on macroeconomic modeling and forecasting for industrialized countries and emerging markets.
Mr. Kuijs has also worked at the University of Amsterdam, the Hypo Vereinsbank (Munich, Germany), and for the Economist Intelligence Unit (London, UK).
He received his undergraduate Drs (Economics) degree from the University of Amsterdam and his Ms (Economics) from the London School of Economics.
Stéphane Guimbert is an economist in the Phnom Penh office of the World Bank. After a couple of years working in Paris and another couple of years in Washington, he moved with his family to Cambodia in August 2007. He is now working on a range of economic policy issues with the government, in particular on issues of growth. When he is not busy playing soccer with his two sons or playing board games with his daughter, he also enjoys playing the piano and reading books. Stéphane moved from Washington’s headquarters to a country office to be able to get out to the field, learn from development projects, meet officials and development partners, etc. But then he still has to go back to his computer to write on the EAP blog.
Dave Lawrence has worked with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) since 1996, when he was sent to a small Ukrainian town to set up a small business advisory center. Since then, he has focused on post-conflict and post-disaster posts, ideally where water, heat and electricity are in short supply. In the 1990s he worked in Armenia, Georgia and Russia, more recently, in the Tsunami-ravaged province on Aceh, Indonesia. Currently he is working in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, the coldest capital city in the world.
Dave works on advisory services programs targeting private sector development, including regulatory reform, small business development, agribusiness supply-chains, shrimp pond management and investment promotion. In his spare time, Dave enjoys whatever his location has to offer: diving in Indonesia, mountain-climbing and hockey in Mongolia, and writing everywhere. He is married to a Ukrainian and has two small children.
Frederico Gil Sander has been based in Bangkok since November 2008. He follows the Thai economy but also works on debt and macroeconomic issues in Laos and Cambodia. His first job was with investment bank Bear Stearns, where he issued bonds for emerging market countries (fortunately none of his proposals for complex securitizations were successful). Having created enough debt (and after an intermission to pursue a PhD in political economy at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School) Frederico went on to work on debt relief for poor countries with the World Bank's Economic Policy and Debt Department. During that time he enjoyed working with debt managers in many African countries, including the Central African Republic, Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mozambique and São Tomé e Príncipe. A Brazilian native, Frederico enjoys football (soccer) but cannot dance the samba (or anything else for that matter).
I am a senior urban environment specialist in the China and Mongolia Sustainable Development Department and I have been based in the World Bank office in Beijing since 2006. However, my passion for China and its people goes back much further, a decade and a half in fact, to the first time I lived in China in 1993. China has changed a lot in those 15 years, but the one thing that never changes – the reason that I continue to dedicate my own professional and personal life to this country – is the unwavering energy and enthusiasm of the Chinese people to ensure that tomorrow is better than today.
My job in the urban development sector in China provides me with immensely interesting opportunities to work on critical problems affecting the environment, livability and long-term economic viability of China’s rapidly urbanizing cities and towns. My work ranges from urban environmental management programs such as water supply, wastewater, solid waste and flood protection, to cultural heritage preservation and tourism development (this slideshow shows an example of the latter).
On May 12, 2008, China’s western region was struck by a devastating 8.0 earthquake, the epicenter of which was located in the mountainous Wenchuan County in Sichuan Province. The scale of the human and environmental tragedy caused by this earthquake is hard to fathom. As part of the Bank’s global network of disaster response, I am coordinating the Bank’s contribution to the Chinese Government’s reconstruction efforts – a challenging task for the next year that I will focus on in this blog.
Victoria Minoian heads the communication and public information services for the Nam Theun 2 project in Laos PDR. Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Victoria considers herself a typical "porteña", meaning she – like half of her generation, to say the least – does not dance the tango in full.
Victoria has been developing her career in both the private and public sector. In 2002 she joined the World Bank in Washington, DC, in the Latin America and the Caribbean region. Nowadays, the East Asia and Pacific region has given her the opportunity to work from the field, based in Vientiane, Laos, providing her a fantastic and varied perspective of the operations work on the ground.
During her time away from work she enjoys reading, swimming, dancing, singing and listening to rock, opera and fox trot music. She truly enjoys Asian food, but she also truly misses an Argentine beef, empanadas and a little bit of cold, snowy weather. But hey, life is beautiful (Vinicius da Moraes says "one need blues to build beauty") so this is the time for the tropics, exotic fruits and everlasting warm, rainy and warmer days!
If you have any specific questions, topics or ideas on the NT2 project you would discuss with Victoria, contact her here.
Chris Pablo is Operations Officer in the World Bank Office Manila's Infrastructure Team. He is the team lead for the project Upscaling Urban Poor Community Renewal Scheme, which aims to improve the living conditions of the poor in urban communities by upgrading basic infrastructure such as water systems, roads and drainage, and solid waste management facilities. Before working with the World Bank in 1999, Chris worked at the National Economic and Development Authority, the Philippines' economic development and planning agency. Chris plays a mean bass and leads the Manila Office's informal band.
Erdene works as a Rural and Environment operations officer at the World Bank’s Mongolia office in Ulaanbaatar. He joined Bank in July 2008. Before that, he worked at an environmental NGO. Erdene graduated from the National University of Mongolia in 1997 and obtained an environmental education masters degree from the Mongolian State University of Education in 2007. He likes to travel and photograph rural life in Mongolia.
My name is Gabriela Leite Soares. I was born in Timor-Leste in Maliana, the capital of the district of Bobonaro. My family moved to the capital city of Dili in 1989, and we have been living there ever since. After finishing high school in 2003, I worked as a receptionist at the Embassy of Malaysia for three months. I joined the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) afterward. I received a full scholarship for one year to attend Gonzaga Preparatory School, a private Jesuit high school located in Spokane, Washington. Upon completing my study at Gonzaga Prep, I was awarded with full scholarship from Gonzaga University, a private Jesuit University also located in Spokane.
During four years of college, I was active in Justice Club and the Hawai’i Pacific Islander Club, and served as the International Student Senator and the President of International Student Union, I also organized to bring Mr. Constancio Pinto, then the Charge d’Affaires of Timor-Leste, to the U.S. to speak about Timor-Leste at Gonzaga University. I majored in Political Science and minored in French. I graduated from Gonzaga University in May 2009, and I joined the World Bank in July 2009 as a Communications Assistant.
Joe works on web development, editing, and coordinates the World Bank's blog for South Asia. He previously worked on the Second China project for the State Department and graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in Political Science and East Asian Language and Literatures. He's an avid tennis player, pianist, and travels as much as he can with a passion for anything new and exotic.
Abhas K. Jha is a housing and urban finance specialist and has been with the World Bank since 2001. He is currently regional coordinator for the Bank's East Asia and Pacific region's Disaster Management Team. He has previously held positions in the Government of India (the Ministry of Finance and earlier in the state of Bihar). He has been Regional Disaster Risk Management Coordinator in the Bank's Europe and Central Asia region and also led the Bank's Urban, Housing and Disaster Risk Management work in Mexico, Jamaica and Peru. Mr. Jha holds graduate degrees in Finance from Johns Hopkins University and in Economics from the University of Madras. He is married with two daughters.
Florian joined the World Bank East Asia and Pacific region's Sustainable Development Department only very recently (September 2008). Before that, he was based in Brussels and worked on managing and developing the Bank's relations with European Union institutions. He now works on coordination, policy, and partnerships, as well as knowledge management, while learning how operations are run in the Bank.
Before all that he lobbied on Capitol Hill; facilitated networking of high-level German-US politicians and businessmen; wrote policy studies on everything from environment, and electricity meter calibration, to aircraft subsidies; promoted the participation of young people in EU integration; acted as EU diplomat at the UN; wrote articles on politics, bar-tended, and worked in a factory. He graduated in International Relations.
Tim Brown has been living, gardening, cooking and traveling in Indonesia with his wife and two children for 13 years. He is an environmental economist currently working on climate change and low carbon issues with the environment team in the Indonesia Country Office and stays engaged on forestry, land and pollution issues. Before joining the Bank about 4 years ago, he worked on USAID and USEPA projects and consulting firms. Before Indonesia, he lived in Mali, Zaire, Nepal, California, Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Laura Bailey started as the World Bank’s country manager for Papua New Guinea in April 2009. Before that, she has worked in Africa and Asia for a wide spectrum of clients – national and international NGOs, bilateral aid agencies, national governments – increasingly focusing on public administration and capacity building, and also doing large project evaluation and design missions.
Laura was born in California, and moved every 2-3 years across the USA and Europe. After finishing an undergraduate degree in public policy and psychology, and a transition break digging Bronze Age relics out of the sand on an archeological site in the Middle East, she spent three years working for an organizational development consulting firm in San Francisco during the technology boom of the mid-1980s. She moved to Boston to take up graduate studies in public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and in 1988 began working on development projects in West Africa.
Pichaya "Noi" Fitts joined the World Bank in 2007 as communications officer for its Thailand office. Before joining the World Bank, she worked as a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme in Papua New Guinea, where she interned in 2004 after graduating from the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.
Like many external affairs officers at the World Bank, Noi had a successful journalism career and holds an M.A. in communications. The late Audrey Hepburn, Robert De Niro, Kenny G, Jon Bon Jovi, Mel Gibson, and Greek musician Yanni are among the international celebrities she has interviewed and photographed. Shaking hand with Colin Powell when he was the US Secretary of State was Noi’s most exciting moment. Her less proud moment was in 1997, when she bumped into Bruce Willis at the launch of Planet Hollywood in Bangkok. She wished she had a better thing to say to him than, "I’m just looking for the bathroom."
Noi has a soft spot for children and old people, and she is addicted to Thai massage. When she's not glued to the computer writing about Thailand, she dreams of becoming the Thai female version of Tiger Woods. For now, she intends to keep her job at the World Bank because there is no way she could make any money golfing.
After 7 years in Washington DC, William Rex moved to the World Bank office in Vientiane in 2006 in search of a more intense interaction with government clients and work-life balance. Now that his two young sons have discovered sticky rice and tuk-tuks, there is probably no route back. Since joining the Lao PDR country office, William has been working on capacity and institutional development, governance, aid effectiveness, and a provincial development project in Khammouane. More recently he took over as team leader of the Nam Theun 2 Social and Environment Project. William worked at the University of Cape Town before joining the Bank, and has a Masters Degree in Public Policy from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He has succeeded in finding more intense interaction with government clients.
Nia Sarinastiti is the Communication and Coordination Officer for the Multi-Donor Fund for Aceh and Nias, a World Bank trust fund. She has been traveling to Aceh and Nias since August 2005.
Nia also manages the communication and coordination for Java Reconstruction Fund (JRF), which was set up after the 2006 earthquake in the Special Region of Jogjakarta and Central Java, and the tsunami in West Java. JRF models on the success of the MDF for Aceh and Nias. She previously worked for IFC (2004-mid 2007) as the Communication Officer in Indonesia.
Edith Bowles is country manager of the World Bank's Solomon Islands office. A graduate of Cornell University and University of Hawaii (MA-Anthropology, 1992), she has fifteen years of professional experience primarily focused on conflict and post-conflict settings, including in Timor-Leste, Myanmar, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, and Sri Lanka.
In addition to the World Bank, Edith has worked for the Jesuit Refugee Service, Pathfinder International, and USAID. Most recently prior to locating to Solomon Island she worked with the World Bank team on cyclone recovery efforts in Myanmar.
Hamish works as the communications officer for the World Bank, Solomon Islands country office. As a volunteer from an organization called the Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development (AYAD), Hamish has received a twelve month contract in this position.
Hamish has recently completed his Masters in International Studies and a Bachelor of Arts with a focus on English Literature and History. He also worked as a journalist in China from 2005-2006. As an early traveler, growing up in both the United States (Maryland) and Australia (Sydney), Hamish inherited a set of itchy feet that have led him to travel through Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe.
James' primary responsibilities lie in coordinating and editing the content of the East Asia & Pacific on the rise blog. He also helps manage the region's Web sites for the World Bank.
James grew up in Iowa, in America’s heartland, and earned a journalism degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He started his professional career as a newspaper reporter, but quickly moved into the rapidly changing world of online journalism, working as Web editor for the Charleston Gazette in West Virginia. He recently left the hills of the Mountain State for a new life Washington. He loves to travel when he can, enjoys playing tennis and rocks the mic at any karaoke night he can get to.
If you have any ideas for the blog, please contact James here.
Claudia manages the web sites for the Bank's East Asia & Pacific region and added this blog to her brood in early 2008. She's a native of the beautiful town in the picture and had to move to Washington, DC, to stay away from the tempting, delicious food of her homeland. Her discovery of East Asian food in recent years has somewhat defeated the original objective, though.
She actually does like DC quite a bit, where she landed after working a few years in the online edition of The Miami Herald.
Note: Nanda no longer works at the World Bank.
Nanda Gasparini can talk and write endlessly, so it's no surprise she has a blog (you may need to stop her every now and then). She blames this on being from Venezuela, a country where she says everyone speaks forever (including the president). Living for the past two years in Laos, she's proud to be the only Venezuelan in the country. She's also the World Bank's communications specialist on the Nam Theun 2 project, a hydroelectric dam being built in the country. Prior to arriving in Laos she worked and studied in the U.S. where she was able to pick up an American accent.
Note: Wolfgang no longer blogs for the East Asia & Pacific on the rise blog.
Wolfgang Fengler is a Lead Economist in the Nairobi office of the World Bank where he covers Kenya, Eritrea, Somalia, Comoros and Seychelles. He took this position in August 2009. Until then he has been a Senior Economist in the Jakarta office of the World Bank. For more than five years he lived with his wife and three small children in Indonesia. He has been managing the Public Finance and Regional development team consisting of 27 members, predominantly national research analysts and economists. While in Indonesia, Wolfgang has worked on several activities, including a national Public Expenditure review, a sub-national support program to provinces, Aceh post-Tsunami reconstruction, Development Policy Loans and SWAPs. Prior to joining the World Bank, he was a Fellow at the Research Institute for International Relations (now in Berlin) and set up Africa Consulting, LLC.
Wolfgang loves ping-pong and tries to play every Friday afternoon with the drivers and security guards in one of the Bank’s conference rooms. He was also part of the World Bank Jakarta soccer team and intends to continue his sports activities in Kenya.
Note: Alessandro is currently on leave from the World Bank.
Hello, I am Alessandro Magnoli Bocchi.
I like economics, because it provides nice tools to understand what’s happening in the world. For instance, it provides answers to questions like: Why do some countries grow, and others don’t? Why investment pours into some regions, but flees from others? What to do with unemployment? Are prices rising too fast?
I hope you too find these questions important and stimulating - and I look forward to learning, together with you, some of the answers.
My main interests include economic growth, fiscal policy and public finance, social systems analysis, welfare theory, and development.
Currently I work at the World Bank. Previously, I was a Research Associate at Harvard University, and an economist at the Inter-American Development Bank.
A U.S. national, Michael Figueroa has worked as an information assistant in the East Asia and Pacific Region for ten years, supporting the region in information management and web development. Michael earned his Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Government at Georgetown University. He was born and raised in New York City.
Naazneen Barma joined the World Bank in September 2007 as a Young Professional. She is a Public Sector Specialist in the East Asia and Pacific Region, focusing on governance and civil service reform and political economy analysis. Her work is currently oriented around implementation of the Bank's new Governance and Anticorruption Strategy in various countries in East Asia.
Naazneen has a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation was a study of the international role in post-conflict peacebuilding. She has published articles on state- and democracy-building, international relations among non-Western nations, and innovation in emerging economies, and is the co-editor of a comparative political economy reader. Naazneen earned her BA (International Relations and Economics) and MA (International Policy Studies) at Stanford University. She was born and raised in Hong Kong.
Note: Deborah no longer works at the World Bank.
Deb works on public sector governance in the East Asia and Pacific region. Before joining the Bank in fall 2007, she worked on foreign policy in the U.S. Congress, on international health and population issues at several nonprofits, and with troubled teens. Outside of work, her interests include photography, yoga, and reading fiction. She has a masters in public policy from UCLA and a BA in history from Haverford College, and grew up outside of Boston. In this blog, she tackles public sector governance issues with her colleague Naazneen.
Philip Karp is Regional Coordinator for East Asia and the Pacific at the World Bank Institute (WBI), the unit of the World Bank responsible for training, knowledge management, and capacity building. Mr. Karp is based in Beijing and is responsible for coordination of WBI’s training, advisory, analytical and technical assistance activities throughout the EAP region. Previously, he held several unit management positions at WBI. In China, Mr. Karp’s work is focused on supporting China’s increasing role in South-South learning and technical cooperation, particularly with Africa. He also is assisting Chinese government agencies and training institutions in enhancing the use of modern information and communication technologies to support domestic and international knowledge and learning networks. Mr. Karp holds a BA degree from Clark University and a MPP degree from the University of California at Berkeley.
Ariel Fiszbein is the Chief Economist for the Human Development Network at the World Bank. He joined the World Bank in 1991 after receiving his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Ariel was for several years the coordinator of the Bank’s Development Impact Evaluation (DIME) initiative, and oversaw the Bank’s expanding efforts to build solid evidence on effective development programs. Together with a group of colleagues, he recently completed a major policy research report that reviews the lessons from the experience of conditional cash transfer programs.
Ariel was born and raised in Buenos Aires and makes a point of visiting regularly to stay in close touch with his family and friends.
Emmanuel Jimenez, from the Philippines, has held a variety of positions as an economist and manager at the World Bank. Since early 2002, he has been Sector Director, Human Development, in the World Bank’s East Asia Region, where he is responsible for managing operational staff working on education and health issues. Prior to this position, he held a similar position in the Bank’s South Asia Region. Before that he served for many years in the Bank’s Development Economics Staff, where he engaged in research on a variety of issues, including education and health finance, the private provision of social services, the economics of transfer programs and urban development. He also led the core team that prepared The World Development Report 2007: Development and the Next Generation. Before joining the World Bank, Mr. Jimenez was on the faculty of the economics department at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada.
Note: Evelyn no longer works at the World Bank.
Evelyn Ng works in the World Bank office in Sydney and is the Research Analyst for the Pacific Island countries. A Malaysian-born Chinese and Australian national, Evelyn completed her Honours degree in Economics in the University of Queensland before joining the World Bank in 2005. Since then, she has worked on short policy notes and economic updates on the Pacific Islands and has been involved with temporary migration work in the region. More recently, she was involved with work on assessing the impact of higher food and fuel prices on the economies and households of Fiji, Tonga, and Kiribati. Known to her colleagues as Eve, she enjoys working with client governments as well as meeting people in villages and learning their ways of life.
These days I work in communications in the World Bank’s East Asia & Pacific region, based in Washington DC. It’s a fascinating place to work with so much going on at any one time and so many smart people to bump into in the corridors. I started out in the communications field as a fledgling journalist in my native Australia. When I started, people were only just coming to terms with the idea of writing a story on a computer (we called them video display terminals then). Things have obviously moved pretty quickly since then. Eventually, I found my way to a large Sunday newspaper in Sydney where I became the environment correspondent. It was the late 1980s when people in Sydney were starting to object to swimming in sewage at their beaches. I wrote a few stories about the issue that upset a few people in Government but things really started to improve after that. (I never think about poo anymore when I dive under the waves at Bondi Beach.) Ever since then, I have been fairly preoccupied by all things green, working for different periods of time at Greenpeace (in London) and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Fiji. I’ve also spent time working with the Australian Government on indigenous land issues. Everywhere I’ve worked my challenge has been to help the organization reach out to people – to get beyond just talking to each other in the safe confines of the office. That’s why I like this blog.
Eric Le Borgne is a Senior Economist for the World Bank's Philippines office in Manila.
Federica Ranghieri is an Environmental Specialist in the East Asian and Pacific Region of the World Bank, where she works mainly on climate change policies, economic instruments and a bit on carbon finance. She previously worked for the Carbon Finance Business Unit and contributed to the launch of the Italian Carbon Fund. She is assistant professor at the University of Milan, where used to teach Environmental Policy and Environmental and Social Communication. She worked also for the IADB on stakeholder engagement and corporate social responsibility. And for the private sector, mainly industrial companies, as advisor on environmental accounting, environmental management, climate change measures, Kyoto Protocol and EU Emissions Trading System compliance. She is a terrible italian cook.
Cameron worked as a senior public sector specialist for the World Bank's Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network in Fiji. He left the Bank in July 2009.
Flore de Préneuf documents the results of development projects for the World Bank. She went to China in 2008 to look at "green projects" financed by the Bank (www.worldbank.org/china/results). Born in France in 1973, she has worked as a freelance journalist and photographer in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Russia, the Middle East and Texas. Her personal photo portfolio can be found at www.foto-kino.com.
Specializing in transportation, energy, and the environment, Deborah Gordon has worked to develop and advance innovative transportation strategies and technologies for over 25 years. In December 2008, she and co-author Daniel Sperling recently released Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability, which provides a concise history of America's love affair with cars and an overview of the global oil and auto industries. On May 20, Gordon and Sperling spoke during a panel discussion at the World Bank's InfoShop book launch series.
Ms. Jaehyang So is Manager of the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), an international partnership dedicated to help poor people gain sustained access to improved water and sanitation services. WSP is funded by donor agencies through trust funds administered by the World Bank.
Ms. So comes to WSP with a background in urban service delivery, utilities and corporate restructuring, and public private partnerships. Ms. So has focused on improving the performance of service providers, utilities, and local governments in the World Bank’s programs in Eastern and Central Europe, East Asia, and South Asia. Immediately prior to joining WSP, Ms. So was the Lead Infrastructure Specialist in the South Asia Regional Infrastructure Department working primarily on Bangladesh and Pakistan on urban water and sanitation sector programs. Ms. So has also worked on the World Bank’s corporate strategy and risk management development, most recently, leading the team preparing the World Bank Group’s Sustainable Infrastructure Action Plan.
Prior to joining the Bank, Ms. So was with Monitor Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she advised Fortune 100 level companies on corporate strategy issues in the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan. She is a Korean national, and holds an MBA and a BA in Economics from Stanford University.
Jim Adams is Vice President of the East Asia and Pacific Region, at the World Bank. In this capacity, he has overall responsibility for World Bank operations in one of the world’s most dynamic regions, covering more than a dozen states ranging from the world’s most populous country --China-- to the smallest and most remote Pacific Islands states.
Previously, Jim was Vice President and Head of Network, Operations Policy and Country Services, at the World Bank. In this capacity, he was responsible for operational policy development, procurement and financial management activities, relations with United Nations and nongovernmental organizations, and support to Regional staff working in all these areas.
Since joining the Bank in 1974, he has held a variety of operational positions in East Asia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa, including as Country Director for Tanzania and Uganda, as Director for Operations Policy, and as a Division Chief of several departments.
Before joining the Bank, Jim worked as a loan officer for Merchants Bank, in Syracuse, NY, and with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, in Geneva, Switzerland.
Jim studied at Colgate University, and holds an MPA from Princeton University.
Joachim von Amsberg joined the World Bank in 1993 as an Economist and Young Professional and worked on World Bank supported environmental programs and policy studies for Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay in the Latin America and Caribbean Region, as well as policy studies in Egypt. Subsequently, he worked for years on the World Bank’s Brazil program. His work brought him to the role of Lead Economist, at the World Bank Headquarters where he led the economic policy dialogue, analytical assistance and adjustment lending programs for Brazil.
In 2004, he was appointed World Bank Country Director for the Philippines where he led a new strategy for enhanced support to the country. He contributed to debates on the Philippines’ fiscal and social agenda. With World Bank support, the Consultative Group of the Philippines was transformed into the Philippines Development Forum, a more participatory process that included players in government, civil society, the private sector, and the international community.
Joachim von Amsberg has a Ph.D. in Finance and Economic Policy from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, completed in 1993; an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Technische Universitaet Berlin, Germany, completed in 1991; and an M.B.A. major in Finance from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, completed in 1990. He is married to Anjum Khan, and has three children. He played junior soccer in his teens.
Joe Leitmann is the World Bank’s environment coordinator for Indonesia, with responsibility for activities related to climate change, natural resource management, pollution, global environmental issues, and environmental safeguards for all sectors. He is also the Bank’s Disaster Management Coordinator and was the founder/first manager of the $650 million Multi Donor Fund for Aceh and Nias following the tsunami.
With over two decades at the World Bank, Joe has worked on projects, programs and policies related to: post-disaster reconstruction, natural resource management, urban environmental management, urban poverty, and renewable energy. In addition to short-term assignments in over 50 countries, he has had multi-year field assignments in Turkey, Brazil and Indonesia. Leitmann began his career in development work as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer.
Leitmann holds a PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of California/Berkeley and a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He is the author of Sustaining Cities: Environmental Planning and Management in Urban Design as well as numerous articles on sustainable development.
Katia is a country economist based in Vientiane, Lao PDR. She joined the Bank in 2003 as a Young Professional and since worked in the World Development Report 2005, Economic Policy and Debt, and East Asia and Pacific Economics unit. In Laos, Katia worked on nearly everything, including macroeconomics, microeconomics and private sector development, trade, growth, and has been happy to apply her knowledge of economics of transition from a planned to a market economy in practice. When not thinking about the Lao economy, Katia enjoys travelling, photography, road biking, motorcycle riding, literature, and ukiyo-e.
Milan Brahmbhatt is a Lead Economist in the World Bank's East Asia and Pacific Region and editor of the twice yearly East Asia & Pacific Update. Milan is also the Bank's go-to expert on the economic impact of the avian flu. He joined the Bank in 1994 after nine years in the private sector in England and the U.S., as an economic forecaster and consultant for a variety of government and multinational business clients. Milan grew up in Kenya and completed high school and higher education in England. He is a voracious reader, especially of literature, history and philosophy, as well as Internet news sources of all kinds.
Arief is the World Bank's Regional Communications Officer for the East Asia Pacific Region based in Washington, DC. Until three years ago he was based in Jakarta and headed the communications team for the Bank’s Indonesia Country Program.
Neeraj Prasad is the regional Coordinator for the East Asia Carbon Finance portfolio and for Climate Change. In this assignment, he is responsible for managing and delivering the Bank’s largest Carbon Finance portfolio of CDM projects, and is coordinating a climate change strategy for the region as well. He also continues to manage several environment projects. Before joining the Bank in 1997, he was a member of the Indian Administrative Service, where his final assignment was in the Indian Ministry of Finance. He was also seconded to the Indian ED’s office in the IMF from 1993-96. He has graduate degrees in International Commerce and History.
Xubei Luo is an economist in the East Asia and Pacific region’s Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Department. She joined the World Bank as a Young Professional in 2005. She has worked on regional economy, investment climate, public expenditure tracking, growth, trade and logistics, labor market, poverty and inequality issues in China, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Cambodia, and European Union countries. Her research has been included in several journals, books, and policy research working paper series.
Xubei holds a Ph. D. in Economics from International Development Research Center (CERDI), University of Auvergne, France , and MAs in Project Analysis, Development Economics and Economic Policy from CERDI, an MA in Finance and a BA in International Finance from Sun Yat-Sen University, China.
Xiaoqing Yu is a lead social protection specialist at the World Bank's East Asia and Pacific region.
Ms. Yu started her career in the World Bank in 1996. Before joining the East Asia region in 2003, Ms. Yu spent about six years in the Eastern European and Central Asian region of the Bank, working on pension and social welfare reforms, as well as labor market development of the Baltic, Balkan and former Soviet Union countries. She worked on various operations and co-authored economic and sector reports, as well as the regional social protection strategy.
Ms. Yu holds a B.A. in economics from Peking University and a Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University.
Zoe Elena Trohanis is an Infrastructure Specialist and acting Regional Coordinator for Disaster Risk Management for the World Bank’s East Asia Region, focusing on climate change and disaster risk management in Indonesia, China and the Philippines. Prior to her current assignment, she worked with the anchor Disaster Risk Management team in the Sustainable Development Network, where she advised the governments of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. She has been with the Bank for over six years, prior to which she worked in the private sector. Zoe holds a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MA from American University.
Chris Bennett is a civil engineer working as a Senior Transportation Specialist in the World Bank's Sustainable Development Department.
