Edith Bowles started as Country Manager in Solomon Islands in 2008, with the opening of the Bank country office. Prior to that, she worked for the WB and USAID in Timor-Leste and other post-conflict settings in Asia and Africa. She spent several years in the 1990s working for NGOs, including three years with the Jesuit Refugee Service working in refugee camps on the Thailand-Myanmar border.
Originally from Massachusetts, she has an undergraduate degree in Asian Studies from Cornell University, including a year spent studying in Beijing. Following two years in Germany in the late 1980s, she studied social anthropology and demography at the University of Hawaii, with support from the East-West Center.