Ugo Gentilini is Global Lead for Social Assistance with the Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice at the World Bank. His interests encompass research and practice on social protection from high-income countries to fragile states. With a PhD in Economics, he has published extensively on social assistance in the context of, for example, labor markets, urbanization, food security and nutrition, subsidy reforms, humanitarian assistance, displacement and mobility. His recent books include Exploring Universal Basic Income (2020), Adaptive Social Protection (2020), and the 1.5 Billion People Question (2017); he is leading the global tracker of social protection responses to COVID-19; he has been a team member of the World Development Report 2019; and he is co-founder of the flagship The State of Social Safety Nets in the World Series. Ugo began his career in 2002 with the UN World Food Programme, and since 2016 he has been producing a weekly newsletter on social protection reaching thousands of subscribers (contact him for receiving it every Friday).