Maria Manuela Faria holds a B.A. in Communication from the University of Lisbon, and a Master in Public Policy: Social and Urban Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School. Manuela has more than 15 years of development experience in Latin America and the Caribbean (LCR), Middle East and North Africa (MNA), and Europe and Central Asia (ECA). In ECA and globally, Manuela has contributed to advancing the implementation of the Citizen Engagement agenda, by conducting portfolio reviews and through being a member of the corporate Citizen Engagement Secretariat. In MNA, she was a core team member of the first regional Guidance Note on Mainstreaming Citizen Engagement in Operations (2014). In LCR, Manuela advised the preparation and implementation of communication strategies of Bank-financed operations in the land administration, rural development, and urban sectors in Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru; she was also a core team member of a RAS operation in the urban sector in Peru. More recently, Manuela joined the Social Sustainability and Inclusion team in the East Asia and Pacific Region, where she contributes to the implementation of the Citizen Engagement agenda, and gender inclusion in the Energy sector, among others.