Fadia Saadah

Fadia Saadah is the Human Development Director for Europe and Central Asia Region.  Before that she was a Practice Director, Global Practice for Health, Nutrition and Population at the World Bank.  She also held several senior and managerial postings at the World Bank including her most recent assignment as the Senior Regional Advisor for Europe and Central Asia Region.  Before that she was a manager at the Operational Policy and Country Services Vice Presidency where she spearheaded some of the World Bank’s most significant modernization and reform efforts including the introduction and roll out of the Program-for-Results, the first new financing instrument the World Bank has introduced in over 30 years.  She led a comprehensive effort to modernize and reform the investment lending financing, and managed the development of the groundbreaking new Access to Information Policy. 

Dr. Saadah has a long history in the health sector at the World Bank where she worked for more than 16 years and she held a number of positions including her role as the Manager of the Health, Nutrition and Population Sector in the World Bank’s East Asia and Pacific Region.  Among her contributions is the development of a strategy for health sector and for HIV/AIDS work in the East Asia Region and coordinating the World Bank’s initial response to avian influenza.  In more than 10 years of work at the operational level as task manager and member of teams working in post-conflict and lower- and middle-income countries, she gained a wealth of experience in developing country-level strategies, designing and overseeing the implementation of operations, innovating, providing quality assurance and portfolio management, working with government counterparts, and achieving results under the very different circumstances countries face.  Having been involved at nearly every level of development assistance—from the operational and country levels to the institutional and global levels—she has a broad understanding of the challenges of development and of the ways the development community can best address them.

Dr. Saadah earned Bachelor and Master of Science degrees from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and Master of Health Sciences and PhD degrees from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA.