Joanne Asquith
Affiliation: Former Director, Thematic and Country Division, Independent Evaluation Department, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Manila, the Philippines
Email: joanne.asquith@gmail.com or joanneasquith@iodparc.com
Ms. Asquith was a director in the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) Independent Evaluation Department (IED) covering thematic and country evaluations. She previously led evaluations of policy-based lending in ADB, the African Development Bank, and in the UK's former Department For International Development. She came to ADB after extensive country experience in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. She has a Master’s degree in economics from Victoria University of Manchester, United Kingdom.
Tonssour Clément Banse
Affiliation: Chief Evaluation Officer, Independent Development Evaluation (IDEV), the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire
Email: c.banse@afdb.org
Mr. Banse trained in the management of economic policy and holds a master’s degree from the Research Center on International Development (CERDI), University of Clermont Ferrand 1, France. Before joining AfDB, he was a consultant and senior macroeconomist in the Burkina Faso Ministry of Finance and Economics. Mr. Banse leads and participates in project performance evaluations, project cluster evaluations, project completion report validations, sectoral evaluations, thematic and corporate evaluations, and country strategy and program evaluations (mainly in fragile states).
Željko Bogetić
Affiliation: Lead Economist, Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), the World Bank Group, Washington, DC, USA
Email: zbogetic@worldbank.org
Mr. Bogetić has served the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in a variety of economist and leadership roles in several world regions over a 26-year career. At IEG, he leads thematic and program evaluations on economic and social policy topics. He was lead economist and economic policy coordinator for the Western Balkans, Russian Federation, South Africa and Southern African Customs Union countries, and Western Africa. He was lead author of South East Europe Regular Economic Report and the World Bank’s Russian Economic Report and has led policy dialogue and World Bank teams that prepared development policy loans, country strategies, growth diagnostics, public finance, and public expenditure reviews. He has published books, articles, and presented papers on topics such as the impact of the global financial crisis, macroeconomic stabilization, fiscal policy in oil-rich countries, public finance reforms, growth diagnostics, tax policy, expenditure policy, dollarization, infrastructure, and productivity and growth. He holds Ph.D. and MA degrees in Economics from the University of Connecticut.
Jeff Chelsky
Affiliation: Manager, Economic Management and Country Programs Unit, Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), World Bank Group, Washington, DC, USA
Email: jchelsky@worldbank.org
Before joining IEG, Mr. Chelsky was lead Economist in the Macroeconomics, Trade, and Investment Global Practice; Manager of the Operations Monitoring and Analysis Unit; and lead economist in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network of the World Bank. He joined the World Bank in 2008 after serving in various functions at the International Monetary Fund, including Senior Economist in the Independent Evaluation Office and the European Department and Senior Advisor to the IMF executive director representing Canada, Ireland, and the Caribbean. He has also held various positions in Canada's Ministries of Finance and Industry. He has a Master’s degree in Economics from Queen's University and an undergraduate degree from the Trinity College, University of Toronto.
Jason Cotton
Affiliation: Country Economist, Caribbean Development Bank, Bridgetown, Barbados
Email: cottonj@caribank.org.
Mr. Cotton has led country teams in preparing policy-based loans and country strategy papers and prepared analytical reports on economic, social, and political developments in CDB borrowing member countries. He also represents the CDB at Caribbean Regional Technical Assistance Centre (CARTAC) Steering Committee meetings and prepares reports to the bank’s board of directors and management on information related to its support to CARTAC. His research publications cover fiscal policy, balance of payments, and vulnerability and resilience. He is providing the CDB with technical leadership on a project to quantify vulnerability and resilience in small states and the application to the access and/or allocation of concessional financial resources.
Augusto de la Torre
Affiliation: Adjunct Professor, Columbia University; Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, USA
Email: apd2151@columbia.edu
Augusto de la Torre teaches at Columbia University’s School of Public and International Affairs, in New York City; and he is the Director of the Economics Research Center at the Universidad de las Américas (UDLA) in Quito, Ecuador. He is also a member of Latin American Committee on Economic and Financial Issues, of the Economic Advisory Council of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and of the Advisory Board of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. He left the World Bank in 2016, after 20 years of service in various senior roles. In the last 10 years at the World Bank, he was the Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Economics at the University of Notre Dame and holds a Licenciatura in Philosophy from the Catholic University of Ecuador.
Shanta Devarajan
Affiliation: Professor of the practice of international development at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Washington, DC, USA
Email: sd294@georgetown.edu
Shanta Devarajan is a professor of the practice of international development at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He was previously at the World Bank, where he was the senior director for Development Economics, the chief economist of the Middle East and North Africa, Africa, and South Asia regions and the Human Development Network. He was also a director of the 2004 World Development Report, Making Services Work for Poor People. Before 1991, Shanta was on the faculty of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Born in Sri Lanka, he received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and an A. B. in mathematics from Princeton University.
Shahrokh Fardoust
Affiliation: Research Professor, Global Research Institute, and Visiting Scholar in Economics, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA
Email: sfardoust@wm.edu
Mr. Fardoust is a visiting scholar in economics at the College of William and Mary, and a senior independent consultant to international and regional development institutions, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. He has more than 30 years’ experience crafting economic development policy, analyzing the global economy and prospects, and evaluating development effectiveness of international development institutions. From 2008 to 2011, he was director of Strategy and Operations in the Development Economics vice presidency of the World Bank, where he contributed to the research and policy priorities of the chief economist, the G-20’s development agenda, quality assurance of the World Bank’s flagship reports, and support of research for operations. His earlier positions at the World Bank included senior adviser to the director-general of the Independent Evaluation Group, senior economic adviser to the chief economist of the World Bank, and lead economist for state reforms in India. He has published many articles on development and international finance. He obtained his MA and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Alan Gelb
Affiliation: Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development, Washington, DC, USA
Email: agelb@cgdev.org
Mr. Gelb is Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development. He previously was Chief Economist for Africa and Director of Development Policy at the World Bank; before that he was Staff Director of the 1996 World Development Report From Plan to Market. His areas of work include the development challenges of resource-rich countries, the transition from socialist to market economies, financial sector policy, the competitiveness and economic transformation of African economies, and results-based lending. Over the past decade his work has focused on development applications of digital identification systems, mobile phones, and electronic payments, to increase the effectiveness and inclusivity of service delivery. He has published widely in all these areas, including books on the management of oil economies and the development applications of digital biometrics and ID systems; he also led preparation of Can Africa Claim the 21st Century?, a collaborative analysis by several agencies. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Oxford University.
Gunnar Gotz
Affiliation: Evaluator and Economist, Office of Evaluation and Oversight, the Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC, USA
Email: gunnarg@iadb.org
Mr. Gotz joined the IDB in 2020 where he evaluates development instruments such as guarantees and policy-based loans. Before that he worked at the German Institute for Development Evaluation in Bonn. There, he evaluated the exit of Germany from budget support as well as structured funds and he published policy briefs on budget support. Before this assignment, he worked and researched at the World Bank in Washington, DC, in the Global Practice for Environment and Natural Resources. He also worked at Germany's KfW Development Bank in Frankfurt. Gunnar holds a Master's degree in international Economics from the University of Göttingen. He also studied at Universities in Porto Alegre (UFRGS – Brazil), Berlin (FU Berlin), and Lisbon (UCP).
Cheryl Gray
Affiliation: Former Director, the Office of Evaluation and Oversight, the Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC, USA; currently an independent consultant, Boulder, Colorado, USA
Email: cherylwgray@gmail.com
Ms. Gray was Director of Independent Evaluation for the World Bank from 2007 to 2011 and Director of the Office of Evaluation and Oversight of the Inter-American Development Bank from 2011 to 2018. She was Director of the World Bank’s Public Sector Governance practice from 1997 to 2002 and Director of Economic Policy and Governance Operations for the World Bank’s Europe and Central Asia Department from 2002 to 2007. In addition to her in-depth engagement with hundreds of evaluations over 11 years, she has published widely on governance and anticorruption, legal and institutional reform, and fiscal policy in developing countries. Ms. Gray completed a 32-year career with the multilateral development banks in 2018 and is now an independent consultant.
Monika Huppi
Affiliation: Principal Advisor in the Office of Evaluation and Oversight at the Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC, USA
Email: mhuppi20816@icloud.com
As Principal Advisor in the Office of Evaluation and Oversight at the IDB, Ms. Huppi advises evaluation teams on the design and implementation of evaluations and is responsible for quality control. She has extensive experience designing and leading complex corporate, country, and sector evaluations both at the World Bank and at the Inter-American Development Bank. Before joining the IDB she worked in the World Bank for over two decades, leading operations, analytical work, policy dialogue, and evaluations in various parts of the world and managing the sector evaluations unit of the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group.
Emmanuel Jimenez
Affiliation: Director General, Independent Evaluation Department, the Asian Development Bank, Manila, the Philippines
Email: ejimenez@adb.org
As Director General, Mr. Jimenez reports to the Bank’s Board of Directors and has responsibilities that include assessing development effectiveness, as well providing lessons to inform operations. Previously, he was an independent consultant who advised, and conducted research and training on evaluation, economics, development management, education, and social protection programs. He was Executive Director and CEO of 3ie, where he led and conducted impact evaluations and evidence reviews. He provided the organization with strategic direction in the generation and use of evidence to guide decisions about policies and programs. Mr. Jimenez had a 30-year career in the World Bank Group and held senior management roles in the Independent Evaluation Group; the South Asia, East Asia, and Pacific Groups; and the Policy Research Department. He was a faculty member of the Economics Department of Western University in London, Canada, and has published extensively in peer-reviewed professional journals, as well as books and reports on economic development. Mr. Jimenez holds a Doctorate in Economics from Brown University (United States), a Master’s degree in Economics from University of Toronto, and a Bachelor’s degree in economics from McGill University.
Ali M. Khadr
Affiliation: Senior independent consultant, Washington, DC, USA
Email: akhadr3@live.com
Mr. Khadr is an independent consultant who has recently undertaken assignments with the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Central American Bank for Economic Integration, and private economic consulting firms. He specializes in macroeconomics, fiscal policy, and multilateral development bank country programming and policy-based lending. He spent 25 years at the World Bank Group, joining in the Young Professionals Program and rising to positions country director in the operations complex and senior manager in the Independent Evaluation Group. He retired from the World Bank Group in 2013. He holds a B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and before joining the World Bank Group was a research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University, a research officer at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, and a visiting assistant professor of economics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has published articles and book chapters covering optimal growth and resource depletion profiles, notably in international refereed journals, and has served as a referee for several such journals.
Homi Kharas
Affiliation: Senior Fellow, the Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, USA
Email: hkharas@brookings.edu
Mr. Kharas is a Senior Fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC In that role, he studies policies and trends influencing developing countries, including aid and development finance, the emergence of the middle class and poverty trends, and global governance and the G-20. He was at the World Bank for almost three decades in various positions, including Chief Economist of the East Asia and Pacific Region. He was the lead author of the High-Level Panel report on the post-2015 development agenda, presented to the UN Secretary General in May 2013. He has authored multiple books, most recently Leave No One Behind (Brookings Press, 2019). He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.
Walter Kolkma
Affiliation: Independent Consultant, the Netherlands
Email: wkolkma@gmail.com
Mr. Kolkma, a Netherlands national, graduated from the Free University Amsterdam with a specialization in urban and rural planning in developing countries. He has a Ph.D. in economics and sociology from Wageningen University Netherlands. He worked for the Free University Amsterdam and spent one year in a refugee research project in Sudan, before spending seven years in Pakistan in public sector management projects with the United Nations Development Program and Dutch development aid. He subsequently worked for OXFAM-NOVIB Netherlands and in an EU-funded public administration reform program in Lebanon, before transferring to ADB in late 2001. At ADB, he was an evaluator in the Operations Evaluation Department. He then moved to the results unit of the Strategy and Planning Department, on ADB’s corporate performance scorecard. In 2011, he rejoined the Independent Evaluation Department as director and oversaw evaluations in agriculture, environment, governance, social sectors, and water supply and sanitation. In 2016 he became director of the Country and Thematic Evaluation Division. He retired from ADB in December 2020, resettled in the Netherlands, and is now a consultant.
James Melanson
Affiliation: Leads Office of Independent Evaluation, the Caribbean Development Bank, Bridgetown, Barbados
Email: melansj@caribank.org
Mr. Melanson has conducted many thematic, sectoral, country, and corporate process evaluations, including a major review of policy-based lending. Previously he was Head of Development Evaluation for Global Affairs Canada, following long experience with the Canadian International Development Agency in planning and managing international development programs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He has post-graduate qualifications in Economics as well as policy and program evaluation.
Mark Sundberg
Affiliation: Chief Economist, Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC)
Email: sundbergm@mcc.gov
Mr. Sundberg is the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s Chief Economist and deputy Vice President of the Department of Policy and Evaluation. He is responsible for the quality of MCC’s economic work and manages the division responsible for economic analysis of growth, poverty impact, and project cost-benefit analysis in MCC compact countries. Before joining MCC, he was manager for the Economic Management and Country Evaluation work of the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group responsible for thematic, sector, and project work on macro-fiscal management, poverty, governance, and evaluation of country programs. Previously he worked in the World Bank Research Department (lead author, 2006 and 2007 Global Monitoring Reports), and country economist for several programs. From 1996 to 1998 he was regional Chief Economist, Emerging Markets, for Salomon Brothers/Citibank in Hong Kong. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University and a BA in Economics and East Asian studies from Yale University.
Marvin Taylor-Dormond
Affiliation: Managing Director, Complaints-resolution, Evaluation and Integrity Unit, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)
Email: marvin.taylor@aiib.org
Taylor-Dormond heads the AIIB’s Complaints-resolution, Evaluation and Integrity Unit (CEIU)
and reports directly to AIIB’s Board of Directors. Marvin is responsible for leading the CEIU with
its following functions: learning and evaluation function – evaluative assessments of AIIB’s
ordinary and special operations, complaints-handling function – implementation of the Projectaffected People’s Mechanism (PPM), AIIB’s complaints-handling mechanism regarding
compliance with the Environmental and Social Policy (ESP), and anti-fraud and corruption
function – anti-fraud and corruption work carried out in accordance with the Policy on Prohibited
Practices (PPP). This includes investigating and handling complaints relating to Prohibited
Practices.
Taylor-Dormond brings a wealth of experience in the multilateral world across various regions.
Prior to joining AIIB, he served as Director General of the Independent Evaluation Department
at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and was Director in the Independent Evaluation Group
(IEG) at the World Bank Group (WBG), where he led the Financial, Private Sector and
Sustainable Development Department (IEGSP) and was Director of Independent Evaluation
for the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee
Agency (MIGA). He also held various senior posts at the Central American Bank for Economic
Integration (CABEI) and was Vice-Minister of Finance of the Republic of Costa Rica. He holds
a PhD in Economics with a focus on Public Finance and Economic Development from
Carleton University-University of Ottawa, Canada. Taylor-Dormond is from Canada and
Costa Rica.
Karolyn Thunnissen
Affiliation: Senior Independent Consultant and a member of the Adelante knowledge and development network of development consultants
Email: karolyn.thunnissen@gmail.com
Ms. Thunnissen was a macroeconomist working in development in East Africa in the mid-1980s and went on to work extensively on macroeconomic, sector, and public finance management issues especially as related to structural adjustment programs. Since 2000, she has been designing, monitoring, and evaluating budget support programs in African and Caribbean countries and in the Balkans, including work for the European Commission. She routinely provides budget support training and coaching for European Commission staff and partner governments. She has also led or participated in many country and strategy-level evaluations for the European Commission.
Stéphanie Yoboue
Affiliation: Economist, the Independent Evaluation Department, the African Development Bank, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire
Email: s.yoboue@afdb.org
Ms. Yoboue is a specialist in international development management and impact evaluation. She has been a core team member of major evaluations, including the 2018 Program Based Operation Evaluation (2012–2017), the Independent Evaluation of AfDB’s Strategy for Addressing Fragility and Building Resilience in Africa (2014–2019) and AfDB’s Private Sector Development Strategy Evaluation (2013–2019). She has been with Independent Development Evaluation department since 2017, supporting the department’s work program implementation. Before joining the AfDB, she worked for an international consulting firm, supporting implementation of CDC-ITOPSS II and USAID-GH Pro operations in various African countries. She holds an MA in Integral Economic Development Management from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and a BA in Economics from George Mason University in Virginia, USA.