Gloria La Cava is currently the Co-coordinator for the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa Region Youth Program. She also served as Youth Regional Coordinator in Europe and Central Asia between 2002 and 2008. She joined the World Bank in 1996 as the Advisor of the Executive Director for Italy, Portugal, Greece, Albania and Malta on Social Policy and Human Resources issues. As a World Bank staff, she worked in the Middle East and North Africa Region, Eastern Europe and Central Asia and Latin America. She has led several regional and country-level youth policy studies, multi-sectoral lending operations and youth development initiatives. She has put in place resource mobilization mechanisms as well as public-private partnerships to support innovative work on youth development and peace building interventions. These include multi-lateral donors, bilateral donors, foundations and private corporations. Ms. La Cava holds a PhD in Social Sciences from New York University with dissertation on Italians in Brazil: the Post World War II Experience (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2000). She was a Professor of Latin American Studies at Pontificia Universidade Catolica of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and has lectured in several American, Latin American and European institutions and has published in several languages.