Education Specialist

Amanda Devercelli

Senior Education Specialist

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Amanda E. Devercelli is the Global Lead for Early Childhood Development (ECD) at the World Bank.  She works across the institution to expand and improve investments in ECD, ensure delivery of high-quality operational and analytical work and build capacity of Bank staff and clients.   In 2012, she launched the Bank’s Early Learning Partnership, a $100 million multi-donor fund that has generated more than $2 billion in funding to scale -up high-quality ECD services worldwide.   Amanda leads operational and analytical work in Kenya, Somalia, Senegal and South Africa currently and has previously worked in Uzbekistan, Pakistan and India.  She created the World Bank’s Early Years Fellowship in 2017 to build future leaders in the field of early childhood. She was the lead author for the World Bank’s white paper on childcare Better Jobs and Brighter Futures: Investing in Childcare to Build Human Capital and is leading a major expansion of childcare work across the institution.  Amanda co-led the development of the Bank’s Systems Approach for Better Education Results-Early Childhood Development (SABER-ECD). She has published on a range of topics including childcare, measuring early childhood outcomes, engaging with the nonstate sector and systems approaches to early childhood.  Prior to joining the World Bank, Amanda worked with community-based schools and international civil society organizations. She has a master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and was awarded the Reynolds Fellowship for Social Enterprise from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.