Ishac Diwan teaches public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Current research interests include growth strategies, the political economy of development, and the pro-active management of natural resources, with a special interest in Africa and the Middle East. Ishac directs the Economic and Political Transformation program of the Economic Research Forum. Ishac got his PhD in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1984. He taught international finance at the New York University’s Business School between 1984-87, before joining the World Bank in 1987, initially in the Research Complex (1987-92), then in the Middle East department and the World Bank Institute. More recently, Ishac lived in Addis Abeba (2002-07) and Accra (2007-11), as the Bank’s Country Director for Ethiopia and Sudan, and then for Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, and Guinea. Ishac has worked on conflict prevention and on state building (in Palestine, Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Yemen, Guinea) and has participated in the Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the Darfur Peace Negotiations, and the Oslo negotiations.