Luis Benveniste is the World Bank Global Director for Education and Skills, and leads the institution's global education strategy and portfolio. This includes overseeing programs that support education systems worldwide, from early childhood to tertiary education, and using innovative approaches such as education technology, all with a focus on improving learning outcomes and skills that prepare learners of today for the jobs of tomorrow.
Previously, he was the Human Development Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the World Bank. He was a co-author of the World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development.
Dr. Benveniste´s research interests focus on education finance, gender, student assessment practices and teacher policies. Other publications include “Financing Education at the Bottom of the Pyramid,” with Samer al Samarrai, in D. Wagner, N. Castillo & S. Grant Lewis (eds.), Learning, Marginalization and Improving the Quality of Education in Low-Income Countries (2022); Teaching in Cambodia (2008), with J. Marshall and M. Araujo; "The political structuration of assessment: Negotiating State power and legitimacy," in A.H. Halsey, P. Brown, H. Lauder & J. Dillabough (eds.), Education: Globalisation and Social Change (2006) and All Else Equal (2003), with M. Carnoy and R. Rothstein, a book on accountability and the organization of public and private schools in the United States.
Dr. Benveniste has worked on a wide variety of World Bank-financed education projects in Africa, East Asia and Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. He received a B.A. Magna Cum Laude in Psychology from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in International Comparative Education from Stanford University.