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Steve Utterwulghe

Senior Private Sector Development Specialist

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Steve Utterwulghe is a Senior Private Sector Specialist with the Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice of the World Bank Group. He serves as the WBG Global Lead for Public-Private Dialogue (PPD). He advises governments and the private sector in Asia, Africa, Central Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, on designing and implementing structured and participatory engagement mechanisms that ensure more inclusive and sustainable pro-growth policy reforms, at the national, sub-national (growth poles, cities, clusters) and sectoral level (agribusiness, tourism, extractives).

Over the last 20 years, Steve has also developed a global expertise in the field of fragility and conflict (FCS). He has lived and worked in war-torn countries such as Angola and Sudan, designed and led programs in most FCS across the globe, including Yemen, Mali, Somalia, the Central African Republic, Pakistan, Colombia, Afghanistan, South Sudan, DRC, Haiti, etc. He worked at the United Nations in Geneva (International Trade Centre, UN/WTO) and in Khartoum, Sudan, for the UN Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General; at the European Commission in Brussels (DEVCO); and as Vice-President of International Development at Search for Common Ground, the world’s largest non-profit organization working in the field of fragility and conflict, development and sustainable business, which operates in 40 countries with a staff of 750. He was also an Advisor to the Australian Government's Agency for International Development.

Steve's work has been published extensively, including by Oxford University Press, in policy journals, news magazines, and in European and African newspapers. He holds Masters degrees from the London School of Economics, and from Tilburg University (the Netherlands) and the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium). He also received a Graduate Certificate from Cambridge University. He has lived in 8 countries and speaks French, English and Portuguese fluently.