Biographies of Presenters and Moderators (alphabetical by last name)

Kathy Alison is a senior management consultant, trainer and facilitator with over 22 years of professional experience. She specializes in designing collaborative programs and activities involving executive level staff and senior level officials from governments, bilateral and multi lateral donor agencies, scientific and technical institutions, and major corporations. She has extensive international experience, having worked in Europe and Eurasia, South Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, and South America on issues including strategic planning, knowledge management, policy formulation, training needs assessments, training design and delivery, workplan development, collaborative problem solving and consensus building, and public participation processes. Ms. Alison has worked in the following technical areas: economic growth and fiscal reform, health and health policy, knowledge management, water resources management, local government, environmental protection and conservation, global climate change, and private sector participation in urban services.

Robert Aten is a senior international economist with substantial experience in economic development activity with USAID. He is now Acting Chief Economist of the Asia Near East region of USAID with a focus on management of ANE economics programs and economic governance activities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and front line States. Previously, he spent nine years in Jakarta, Indonesia helping to manage one of USAID’s larger economic governance activities. His previous work experience includes Vice President and Chief Economist of the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation, as Senior Economist in the Offices of Economic Policy and Domestic Finance in the US Treasury Department, and as Senior Economist on the US Joint Economic Committee. Additionally, he has experience for substantial stints as Economics and Finance Department faculty member at Baruch College in the City University of New York, Supervising Program Analyst in the New York City Bureau of the Budget, Budget Examiner in the US Office of Management and Budget, and policy analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He has significant other teaching and consulting experience. Dr. Aten holds a Ph.D. and an MA in Economics from New York University, an MA in Philosophy from the University of Chicago, and a BS in mathematics from the University of Illinois.

Chris Barltrop is Senior Financial Markets Advisor in USAID/EGAT’s Office of Economic Growth. Mr. Barltrop is a senior international commercial banker with eighteen years of financial sector policy advisory and technical assistance experience in 28 developing and emerging countries. He has been involved in strengthening or restructuring individual banks and entire banking systems, working with the host country Central Banks and Ministries of Finance, the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, USAID and the European Commission directly or through major consulting firms. His primary focus is on enhancing economic growth and social stability through strengthening the financial sector. Chris has a Master of Business Administration in International Management from the American Graduate School of International Management. He received his banking training from Citibank and two major regional banks that are now Bank of America. He co-authored the authoritative Banking Institutions in Developing Markets: Interpreting Financial Statements, a World Bank publication, which has been translated into Russian, Hungarian and Polish and is being used extensively in Eastern Europe and the NIS.

Jim Barnhart is the Chief of the Office of Economic Opportunities, (USAID/Jordan). As the director of this office, Jim manages two strategic objectives. The first is a technical assistance-focused program that targets a wide variety of economic growth issues, including public sector reform, legal and regulatory reform, and private sector expansion. Specifically, the program covers the following sectors: financial markets reform, trade capacity building, privatization of state-owned enterprises, e-government and public sector reform, firm-level support, micro-enterprise promotion, special economic zone creation, customs modernization, tourism development, and entrepreneurial growth. The annual budget for these activities is $38 million. Secondly, Jim supervises special objective incorporating the annual cash transfer to Jordan, including the policy-based conditions precedent for the transfer. In FY 2004, the cash transfer amounted to $240 million. Before joining USAID, Jim worked for 12 years in the NGO world, primarily in the Middle East. He has a Masters in international economics from SAIS, and will receive a Ph.D. in Economics from Georgia State University this August.

Kenneth Baum is the Senior Environmental Economist in the U.S. Agency for International Development, and is currently seated in the Office of Agriculture in the Bureau for Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade. Dr. Baum, a Phi Beta Kappa, received his PhD in Economics at Iowa State University with minors in Agricultural and Natural Resources Policy and Statistics/Econometrics. He received a M.S in Urban Studies from the University of Chicago after completing coursework in anthropology for a M.S in comparative economic systems at Northwestern. He is the CTO and manager for the second phase of the Environmental Policy and Institutional Training IQC (EPIQ II). Prior to joining USAID, Dr. Baum was seconded from USDA to the World Bank from 1989 to 1991 to lead strategic planning activities on sustainable agriculture, water resource, and forestry policy. From 1980 to 1989, Dr. Baum held a number of research and management positions at USDA in the Economic Research Service (ERS) including Section Leader for Farm Policy Analysis Systems, Section Leader for Farm Costs and Returns, Chief of the Livestock Branch, and Deputy Director for the Natural Resources and Environment Division. During this period, Dr. Baum was awarded the Administrator’s Special Merit Award twice for Outstanding Research and again for Program Planning and Design. Before joining USDA, Dr. Baum was an Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech where he supervised over $1 million in funded research programs. Dr. Baum is well known professionally and has published a book on “Modeling Farm Decisions for Policy Analysis,” has authored over 50 refereed articles, and has presented over 100 papers at professional meetings.

Avrom Bendavid-Val, Chemonics Vice President for Environment and Development, is a senior economist and environmental management systems (EMS) specialist with nearly 40 years experience in environmental management and regional and urban economic development. Before becoming IQC Manager for the Chemonics EPIQ consortium he served as chief of party of two large multi-country USAID projects (PRIDE and EAPS) dealing with environmental finance, public/private partnerships, competitiveness, water and wastewater management, low-stack emissions, pollution prevention (P2), solid waste management, energy efficiency and demand management, environmental institutional assessment and strengthening, environmental policy, regulatory compliance incentives and enforcement, environmental metrics, EMS, and related environment and development subjects in the Middle East and Europe and Eurasia regions. He has also recently served as project manager and senior technical specialist for two multi-year EMS, P2, and water resource management projects in Romania. His book Regional and Local Economic Analysis for Practitioners (Greenwood Press) has, over the course of 30 years and four editions, become recognized worldwide as a basic text and working reference in economic analysis for development decision making at sub-national levels. Mr. Bendavid-Val is a certificated ISO 14001 auditor, co-author of Green Profits: The Manager’s Handbook for ISO 14001 and Pollution Prevention (Butterworth-Heinemann, March 2001), and co-author of Achieving Environmental Excellence: Integrating P2 and EMS to Increase Profits (Government Institutes, March 2003).

Richard M. Bird, a member of the Advisory Panel of the Fiscal Reform in Support of Trade Liberalization Project, is Professor Emeritus of Economics; Adjunct Professor and Co-Director of the International Tax Program, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto; Petro-Canada Scholar, C.D. Howe Institute; Distinguished Visiting Professor, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University; Consultant, World Bank Institute; and Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School (2001-02). He holds a Ph.D. in economics and has taught at Harvard University and the University of Toronto and held visiting positions at Monash University, Australian National University, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Japan Council of Science, Indian Council of Social Science, Harvard Law School, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, University of York (UK), and Georgia State University. Other major positions held include Advisor on Tax and Monetary Policy, Government of Colombia; Chief of Tax Policy Division, International Monetary Fund; and Director of Institute for Policy Analysis, University of Toronto. Dr. Bird has published numerous books and articles on public finance and taxation issues. He is currently on the editorial boards of several journals. He has consulted and lectured in over 40 countries for the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, OECD, Inter-American Development Bank, USAID, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Australian Development Advisory Bureau, national governments and various private consulting firms.

Peter J. Boettke is the Deputy Director of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy, a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center, and a professor in the economics department at George Mason University. Boettke was born and raised in New Jersey. He received his BA in economics from Grove City College and his PhD in economics from George Mason University. Before joining the faculty at George Mason University in 1998, he held faculty positions at Oakland University, Manhattan College and New York University. In addition, Boettke was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution for War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University during the 1992-1993 academic year. He has been a visiting professor or scholar at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, the Max Planck Institute for Research into Economic Systems in Jena, Germany, the Stockholm School of Economics, Central European University in Prague and Charles University in Prague.

Jamie Boex is an Assistant Research Professor with the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. Dr. Boex received his doctorate in economics from Georgia State University in December 1999. Jamie is dedicated full-time to the technical assistance, training and research aspects of the International Studies Program. Dr. Boex has considerable experience in the provision of technical assistance and professional training in the areas of fiscal policy and fiscal decentralization in developing and transitional economies. In particular, Jamie specializes in the analysis of intergovernmental transfer arrangements; among others, he has developed computer simulation models for the allocation of subnational resources in Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Malawi, Moldova, Uganda, Ukraine and the Russian Federation. He further specializes in fiscal management issues, particularly the development of expenditure projections and revenue estimates that form the basis of a multi-year approach to budgeting. He has authored and contributed to numerous reports on fiscal management, intergovernmental fiscal relations, tax policy and tax administration issues in transitional and developing countries.

Bruce Bolnick, Ph.D. is Chief Economist for the International Group at Nathan Associates Inc. Dr. Bolnick has over 30 years of professional experience as a development economist, including more than 13 years of field work in Africa and Asia.

His research and advisory work has focused mainly on fiscal and monetary policy, growth and poverty reduction strategy, and financial market reforms. However, he has been involved for many years in studies on the economics of HIV/AIDS, starting with supervision of a pioneering general equilibrium model 15 years ago on the impact of the disease in Africa. In 2001, Dr. Bolnick conducted an analysis of the economic and budgetary impact of HIV/AIDS in Mozambique, including projections of its effect on poverty dynamics. After receiving this study, the Minister of Planning and Finance (who is now the Prime Minister) began emphasizing in public statements that HIV/AIDS is a serious economic problem, as well as a health crisis. At Nathan Associates, Dr. Bolnick is project director for the USAID SEGA contract in South Africa, which has sponsored numerous studies on the macroeconomic and microeconomic effects of HIV/AIDS. These include a longitudinal survey that is yielding valuable insights on household coping mechanisms and income dynamics, as well as a macro-econometric analysis for the government demonstrating that the economic benefits of the national anti-retroviral rollout outweigh the program costs.

Before joining Nathan, Dr. Bolnick was a Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, a Faculty Associate at the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard, and an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate School of International Economics and Finance at Brandeis University. Earlier, as a Senior Associate at the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID), he headed economic advisory projects in Mozambique and Malawi, and served as resident economic advisor in Zambia and Indonesia. Dr. Bolnick holds a PhD in economics from Yale University.

Timothy Born is Team Leader for USAID/Mozambique’s Trade and Investment Strategic Objective “Increased Labor-Intensive Exports.” A Personal Services Contractor since 1982, Mr. Born has served in a number of sub-Saharan African posts, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then known as Zaire), Liberia and, since 1989, Mozambique. He holds a Master’s Degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a B.A. from St. Johns College, Annapolis.

Carolyn Brehm is Director, National Government Relations for the Procter & Gamble Company. Based in P & G’s Washington office, she covers global corporate issues including electronic commerce and privacy, biotechnology, and chemicals management and provides legislative support for the food, drugs and cosmetics businesses.

She has served as Director of Legislation for The Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers of leading American corporations, where she helped lead the business coalition effort to secure Congressional approval for permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with China. For 13 years, she was a senior lobbyist for General Motors Corporation where she was responsible for international trade and investment policy and project support for GM’s international operations.

Ms. Brehm has also served Vice President of Asia, based in Hong Kong, for ORBIS International, a global humanitarian organization working to eliminate avoidable blindness in the developing world. She began her career at the U.S.-China Business Council, a non-profit organization promoting trade and investment with China. She has authored a number of articles for the China Business Review and a chapter in the book, “U.S. China Trade: Problems and Prospects”, published in 1988.

Ms. Brehm is a graduate of Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, with a specialization in East Asian Studies. She holds a Masters in Business Administration from the University of New Haven (CT).

Stephen Brent is head of the MCA Coordination Unit in PPC. This unit coordinates USAID’s support for the MCA, with special attention to threshold programs (programs to help countries that are close to meeting MCA qualification requirements improve their performance on the MCA indicators through self-led reforms). Mr. Brent holds a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University, is a Navy veteran, and has worked on the Hill on foreign relations issues. He has been a USAID officer since 1987, serving as special assistant in the Africa Bureau from 1987-91, coordinator for Southern Africa drought relief in 1992, team leader for democracy and governance in USAID/South Africa from 1992-99, Associate Director for DG, education, health, and workforce development in USAID/Egypt from 1999-2003, and head of the Center for Development Information and Evaluation in PPC from 2003-2004. Mr. Brent has published articles on development issues in Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs.

Melissa Brown is USAID’s Senior Policy Advisor for Democracy and Governance. In that position, she is responsible for democracy and governance issues as well as a broad range of issues related to fragile states, post-conflict and crisis response. Previously, she served as USAID’s lead on coordination with other donors on these same issues, Director of USAID/Nigeria’s democracy and governance programs, and team leader for Africa in USAID’s Center for Democracy and Governance. In these positions, she has traveled extensively throughout sub-Saharan Africa, as well as in the Balkans. Prior to joining USAID, she held various research and fellowship positions, including with the Overseas Development Council, the Department of State and the World Bank. She has a Master’s Degree from Georgetown University’s Masters of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) program.

Cynthia Clement is the Director for the Governance Institutions Team at the IRIS Center in developing and implementing a broad portfolio of projects that contribute to better public sector management, stronger legal and regulatory systems supporting both rule of law and markets, and enhanced understanding of the importance of transparency and accountability in both political and economic decision-making. Currently, she is contributing to the design of new methodologies for corruption assessment and helping to pilot implementation in Romania. She also serves as technical advisor to a Romanian NGO conducting a test of a new FOI law’s implementation. Previous work includes assessment of potential for legal reform to support secured lending in Egypt, design and implementation of a legal and regulatory reform project in Romania, development of a survey addressing the level of public awareness of legal rights in Georgia, a study of competition policy in Sub-Saharan countries, a justice sector assessment in the Caribbean region, recommendations for the Ministry of Justice in Moldova, design and management of a multi-scholar research project on the economic impact of legal reform in transition countries, and economic policy education in Mongolia. She has also contributed substantively to the USAID conferences on economic growth and legal and institutional reform. At the University of Maryland, she has taught undergraduate economics courses on antitrust and regulatory policy, international trade and finance, comparative economic systems, and introductory macro and microeconomics.

Michael Crosswell is the Senior Economist in PPC’s Policy Planning Office. As senior policy advisor for Economic Growth, he has led policy and strategy development and “goal reviews” in the EG goal area. In the area of strategic planning, he led the review and update of USAID’s strategic plan in CY2000, and was a primary author of the January 2004 White Paper. As background for both efforts, he wrote “Strategic Planning, Foreign Aid, and Development”, to be presented at an international conference in July 2004. He has provided TDY assistance for strategy development in Macedonia and Albania. In the policy area, he coordinated the development and implementation of USAID’s policy agenda during CY2000. He wrote “USAID and Poverty”, a policy background paper; a follow-up paper on “Poverty and Development; Lessons from Country Experience”; and co-authored a policy issues paper on trade and investment. He has also written in the general area of foreign aid, development, and U.S. national interests, including “The Development Record and the Effectiveness of Foreign Aid” published in 1999. Prior to joining PPC he served as Chief Economist for Asia/Near East for nearly a decade, focusing on structural adjustment, trade and investment, poverty, graduation, and country performance indicators. He made numerous TDY’s, working mainly on major USAID programs in the Philippines, Pakistan, and Egypt, and secondarily on other Asian countries and issues. He began his AID career in PPC working on basic human needs, strategic budgeting, general equilibrium planning models, international development targets, food aid, and non-project assistance, with TDY’s to Tanzania, Kenya, Egypt, and Jamaica. Before coming to AID he worked as an International Economist at the FED. He majored in economics and international studies at the University of North Carolina, and also studied for a year at Gottingen University in Germany. He served over two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Venezuela, and then earned an MA and Ph.D. in Economics from Northwestern University, concentrating in international trade and development.

David Dod is a senior economist in EGAT’s Office of Economic Growth and manages the agency’s Fiscal Reform Project. During the previous 15 years, he served mainly in USAID field missions in Egypt, Russia, and Ukraine – where he negotiated and managed many activities relating to the regulation and development of banking and the financial sector, tax policy and administration, and privatization in the agricultural and energy sectors. During 1997-2000, he was the team leader for USAID’s performance-based Africa Trade and Investment Policy (ATRIP) reform program.

At the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, Mr. Dod was chief of the International Finance Division’s Emerging Markets Section, from 1977-87, and assisted in developing stabilization and financial-sector adjustment programs for Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina. In the area of U.S. bank supervision, he worked closely with federal bank examiners on regulatory assessments and provisions relating to country risks and non-performing international loans; he also worked as an economic consultant at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. He studied for a PhD in Economics at Stanford University.

Allen Eisendrath is a senior infrastructure finance specialist with USAID’s Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade Bureau, Office of Energy and Information Technologies. His assignment focuses on infrastructure finance activities in the Europe and Eurasia Bureau. Prior to taking the USAID position in May 2004, Dr. Eisendrath was an infrastructure specialist in Deloitte Emerging Market’s Utilities and Infrastructure Practice. For the past 15 years, he has been a leader in the design of innovative transactions and restructuring approaches for troubled transport, water and power companies. Recent examples of his innovative work include the “distribution margin” design for privatisation of four electricity distribution companies in Karnataka State, India, the initial design of the structured lease contract for Alexandria, Egypt water and wastewater services, and the design of lease and concession contracts in Colombia and Nigeria. He has been directly involved in designing water and power privatisation transactions in Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Marshall Islands, and Nigeria. He has also led infrastructure reform projects related to power, water, and transport in Colombia, India, Indonesia, Egypt, and Jordan.

Mayada El-Zoghbi is a founding partner of Global Microenterprise Initiatives, LLC, a private consultancy company that provides innovative and specialized consulting services in the areas of development finance, microfinance institution-building and regulatory and macroeconomic research and analysis. Ms. El-Zoghbi has over 10 years of microfinance and enterprise development experience. She founded and managed several non-bank financial institutions in the Balkans including Prizma in Bosnia and Herzegovina and KEP in Kosovo. For the past 3 years, Ms. El-Zoghbi has been designing training programs and providing direct technical assistance to financial institutions targeting the poor. She is co-author of a manual and trainer’s guide sponsored by the International Labour Organization and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees which aims to expand the capacity of NGOs in designing and implementing financial services for low income people in areas affected by conflict. Most recently, Ms. El-Zoghbi has been supporting a CGAP/World Bank sponsored Apex facility in Afghanistan providing finance and technical assistance to financial intermediaries. Also in Afghanistan, Ms. El-Zoghbi worked with the ILO to establish a capacity building facility that supports the transformation of NGOs into viable financial institutions. She is currently working on ARDI, a USAID funded program providing rural financial services in Iraq. Ms. El-Zoghbi holds a Master’s of International Affairs from Columbia University and a B.S. from the University of Minnesota.

Erin Endean is Chief of Party of the USAID-funded Support for Trade Capacity-building Project, an initiative under the Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade (EGAT) Bureau. The project provides trade-related assistance to a variety of developing countries and strengthens USAID expertise on the crucial role of trade in economic development. Before joining Nathan Associates as a Principal Associate in the Trade and Investment Policy practice in 2001, Ms. Endean worked for eight years for an international consulting firm founded by former U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Carla A. Hills, where she advised U.S. firms on market access and investment issues in Asia, especially China, as well as in Europe. Earlier, she worked at the Office of the USTR, first as Director of Japanese and Chinese Affairs and then as Executive Assistant/Staff Director to USTRs Carla Hills and Mickey Kantor. Before she joined the USTR, Ms. Endean was the senior economic analyst on the Chinese economy and trade regime at the Central Intelligence Agency. She speaks Mandarin Chinese. Ms. Endean received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Yale University.

Heywood Fleisig is a research associate at the Center for the Economic Analysis of Law in Washington, D.C. During his tenure, the Center has prepared studies, draft laws, and reform programs for more than twenty countries, in areas including frameworks for secured lending, and for company, civil, and land registration; it also completed the CEAL Model Filing Archive for Secured Transactions, deployed with great success in Romania.Mr. Fleisig received his Ph.D. in economics from Yale. In recent years he has written mainly on the economic analysis and economic impact of the reform of legal systems, focussing on secured transactions, mortgages, and systems of civil and land registration. A list of his publications in these areas appears at www.ceal.org. Before joining CEAL, Mr. Fleisig held a variety of positions in Operations and Research at the World Bank, including Principal Economist in the offices of the Chief Economists for Latin America and for Asia. Before retiring from the Bank, he served as Economic Advisor for the Private Sector Development Department. Prior to that Mr. Fleisig served on the economic staffs of the Congressional Budget Office, of the Federal Reserve Board and taught at Cornell.

James Fox worked for many years in AID/Washington and in USAID missions in Latin America, and was chief economist for Latin America for ten years. He also worked as an economist for the State and Treasury Departments, and for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Carlos Gadsden-Carrasco, an RTI/USAID and OSI Senior Consultant, works with the Mexican Presidency Office on the National Fiscal Convention. Formerly he was the first General Director of the National Institute for Federalism and Municipal Development of the Mexican Government, and before that head of the Municipal Development National Center. He elaborated the President Fox National Program for an Authentic Federalism. From 2001 to 2003, he occupied the Presidency and Vice-Presidency of the Highest Authorities Network on Decentralization, (RIAD) of the OAS. He was the highest authority on Municipal Development of the State Government of Guanajuato for six years, being one of the original consultants of the municipal government in León. As a Consultant, he has had nearly one hundred clients in the private sector. He was rector of the Inter-University Center of Knowledge.

He is a researcher on participation of the International Sociological Association. He is a Doctoral Candidate on Political Sociology and has an MA in Sociology both at the University of Essex, UK. His First Degree is in Philosophy. He has wrote and given papers extensively on decentralization, federalism and intergovernmental relations.

Mark Gallagher, a Development Alternatives, Inc.(DAI) staff member and economist and Chief of Party of the USAID-funded Fiscal Reform in Support of Trade Liberalization Project is an expert in public finance, including: macro-fiscal analysis, tax policy and its implementation, fiscal decentralization, trade policy and customs operations, and international trade and finance. He is a former USAID Foreign Service economist as well as having worked as a World Bank economist. Gallagher has advised numerous countries on tax policies and tax administration, drafted fiscal legislation, trained economists and tax administrators and others, and has been a team leader and chief of party on numerous occasions. He has been instrumental in the analysis, reform and the drafting of new tax legislation in transition economies and post-conflict environments. Gallagher has evaluated, designed, and managed fiscal reform projects in a variety of countries, including: Liberia, Egypt, El Salvador, Bosnia, Tanzania and Guatemala. He is fluent in Spanish and German, and has published books, monographs, journal articles and consulting reports and models in public finance and economics. He holds a Ph.D. in economics and has taught several university-level courses in the U.S: and abroad.

Richard Herold is Director of International Affairs for BP in Washington, DC. Over the past decade his career with BP has included assignments in Beijing, Rio de Janeiro, Chicago, and a previous posting in Washington, DC. From 1979 to 1990, Mr. Herold served in the U.S. Foreign Service. His assignments included Vice-Consul, Porto Alegre, Brazil; Africa Assistance Coordinator, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC; and Deputy Chief of General Affairs at the American Institute in Taipei, Taiwan. Mr. Herold speaks Chinese (Mandarin), Portuguese, French, and Spanish and has traveled extensively in Asia, Africa, South America, and Europe.

He holds a JD from the Georgetown University Law School and a BA in Political Science and Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He serves on the boards of the US-Indonesia Society and the US-ASEAN Council.

Aart C. Kraay is a Senior Economist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank. He joined the Bank in 1995 after earning a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, and a B.Sc. in economics from the University of Toronto. His research interests include international capital movements, growth and inequality, governance, and the Chinese economy. He has also worked for the China department of the World Bank and was a team member of the 2001 World Development Report “Building Institutions for Markets”. He has taught courses in macroeconomics, international economics, and growth at Georgetown University and the Sloan School of Management at MIT. His recent publications include “Trade, Growth, and Poverty” (Economic Journal, February 2004), and “Growth Is Good for the Poor” (Journal of Economic Growth, 2002), both with David Dollar.

Anthony Lanyi is Director of the Market Institutions Team—covering economic policy and financial services—at the IRIS Center. Before joining IRIS, he worked for 26 years at the International Monetary Fund; his nine years there were spent as Deputy Director of the IMF Institute. He has also taught economics at the University of California at Berkeley, Princeton University, and Johns Hopkins University. Since joining IRIS, Dr. Lanyi has been in charge of a number of studies dealing with economic governance in Latin America, India, East Asia, and the Europe and Eurasia Region, including two reviews of fiscal reform in Russia, a case study of anti-corruption reforms in the Bolivian customs, and a published paper on the governance aspects of the East Asian financial crisis. He has also helped organize two Partners in Transition conferences in Eastern Europe, and organized the first in-depth module on macroeconomic policy for the EGAT training program. Last year, he supervised and participated in a set of studies to describe the state of corruption studies, and the dynamics of corruption in the People’s Republic of China, for the Office of Net Assessment, Department of Defense; this work appeared this year in a conference volume, including Dr. Lanyi’s paper, “Measuring the Economic Impact of Corruption: A Survey”. Currently, he directs a project to develop, for the E&E Bureau of USAID, an assessment methodology for anti-corruption programming.

Neil Levine is the Chief of the Governance Division in USAID's Office of Democracy and Governance in the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance. Previously, he served as deputy director for the Office of Central American Affairs (LAC/CEN) from 1995-2000. He has a strong interest in countries in transition and worked closely in support of the USAID’s Missions in Central America to support implementation of the peace accords in El Salvador and Guatemala. From October 1998 through June 2000, he worked to develop the strategy, budget justification, and implementation of the post-Hurricane Mitch Hurricane Reconstruction programs in Central America. From 1993 to 1995, he served as congressional liaison officer in the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs with responsibility for the Latin America Bureau and democracy and governance issues. Before coming to USAID, Neil served on Capitol Hill for 10 years, first on the House Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs and then as legislative assistant for foreign affairs to Congressman Edward Feighan (OH). He has also worked as a research assistant at Human Rights Watch in New York. He has a master’s degree in international affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs, and a certificate from the Institute for Latin American and Iberian Studies, Columbia University. He has a B.A. from Earlham College.

Stephen Lewarne is Senior Vice-President and Partner responsible for trade, investment and economic policy at The Services Group (TSG). Dr. Lewarne has extensive experience in management consulting in economic development and post-war reconstruction and the provision of practical policy advice in regimes undergoing critical economic and social reform. In the Philippins as the macroeconomic policy advisor under the USAID AGILE Project, Dr. Lewarne advised the International Finance Group of the Department of Finance. Most recently, Dr. Lewarne is the Chief Project Economist for the USAID Project on Economic Governance in Iraq providing briefings and analytical papers for both the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq, USAID Washington, as well as the National Security Council (NSC). He is also the Chief Economist with the Central Bank of Afghanistan and for the USAID-funded Afghanistan Economic Governance Program overall. Dr. Lewarne led the USAID Team for BearingPoint (formerly KPMG) Consulting into Kosovo in 1999. He oversaw the design of and the implementation of the new Central Fiscal Authority and then the creation of the Ministry of Finance and Economy. Dr. Lewarne has been the Chief Economist for TSG in the Middle East, in West Bank and Gaza as well as on TSG’s portion of the AMIR project in Jordan. Through his over 15 years in economic development he has gained extensive knowledge of Muslim countries, Central Asia and post war economies. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Indiana University in both macroeconomics and monetary policy.

Humberto Lopez is a Senior Economist in the Poverty Reduction Group of the World Bank. Before moving to the poverty group in 2003, he spent 5 years as Country Economist for Honduras and El Salvador in the Bank's Central American Department. He has also taught economics at the University of Salamanca in Spain and at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. Humberto Lopez has published academic papers in international journals in the areas of fiscal policy, exchange rate determination, and international business cycles. His current interests include the determinants of growth, inequality, and poverty.

Clay Lowery has been deeply involved in the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) since President Bush announced the initiative in early 2002: in its creation while working for the National Security Council (NSC), to its design and start up while at the Department of Treasury, to his current position at the MCC managing many of the operational issues. Prior to joining MCC, Mr. Lowery served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Debt, Development, and Quantitative Policy at the Treasury Department. Over the past decade, he has held several positions at Treasury and the NSC working on such issues as negotiating debt workouts, developing and implementing the HIPC initiative (debt reduction for the poorest countries), and providing policy advice on a myriad of financial crises around the world. In addition, Mr. Lowery has served as a Chief of Staff at a German bank, and managed development programs for an NGO in a number of African countries. Mr. Lowery has conducted international development programs, negotiated deals, or worked on international finance issues in over 30 countries.

Betsy Marcotte is a Vice President with PA Government Services, and has over 20 years of experience linking environmental and economic policy at the national and local levels. She has been responsible for the administrative, technical and financial management of more than $50 million of US and other donor assisted environmental policy and resource management projects and currently manages PA’s EPIQ II contract with USAID. Recent USAID projects include design of four regional, multi-year activities (election reform, agriculture and improved rural livelihoods, trade expansion, and transboundary river basin management) to support implementation of the Regional Center for Southern Africa’s (RCSA) 2004-2010 Strategic Plan; development of strategic options to improve access to reliable, safe and adequate supplies of water and power in India; and design and start-up of a program to support the development of water user associations in Romania. Ms. Marcotte managed PA’s Water IQC from 1999 – 2001 and managed the Environmental Pollution Prevention Program (EP3) from 1994 – 1998. Prior to joining PA in 1994, Ms. Marcotte was a Vice President at ICF, Inc. There, she directed projects for USEPA covering almost all environmental programs, including hazardous waste management, Superfund site clean-up, acid rain regulation, ground water protection, and safe drinking water.

Caralee McLiesh is a Senior Economist with the Monitoring, Analysis and Policy Unit in the Private Sector Development Vice Presidency of the World Bank Group. Her responsibilities include co-managing the Doing Business report, which benchmarks the regulatory environment for business in over 140 countries. After joining the World Bank as a Young Professional in 2000, she worked in the research group as a principal author on the World Development Report 2002 “Building Institutions for Markets,” and then with the Middle East and North Africa region. Prior to joining the World Bank she held positions with the International Red Cross in Botswana and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and with the Boston Consulting Group. She holds a PhD in Finance from the University of Melbourne and a Bachelor of Economics from the Australian National University.

Malcolm McPherson is Senior Fellow in Development at the Center for Business and Government of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He gained his PhD in economics from Harvard in 1980. His research interests include agricultural development, monetary theory and policy, the effectiveness of foreign aid, promoting sustained growth and development in Africa, and mitigating the economic impacts of HIV/AIDS. Before joining the Center for Business and Government, he worked for eighteen years with the Harvard Institute for International Development (1982-2000). Dr. McPherson has consulted with numerous international agencies and has served as resident advisor in The Gambia (1985-89) and Zambia (1992-96). He has co-edited books on economic reform in The Gambia and another on economic reform in Zambia (both published by Harvard University Press). His publications include several books and numerous chapters and articles on macroeconomic management, agricultural development, and financial reform. His recent interests focus on the role of capacity building and human capital on economic growth. With HIV/AIDS undermining human capital, development specialists have to devise means of compensating for the losses. This requires improved approaches to workforce management, education and training, health, and macroeconomic management. McPherson has been working with the staff of the Bureau of Economic Growth at the United States Agency for International Development and colleagues at Harvard University to determine how these improvements can be fostered through policy reform, public-private partnerships, and enhanced donor coordination.

John W. Mellor has worked intensively on rural development issues since 1961. He is Vice-President of Abt Associates, a policy-consulting firm. Previously he was President of John Mellor Associates. He was the founding Director of the International Food Policy Research Institute; Chief Economist of USAID; and Professor at Cornell University – in Economics, Agricultural Economics, and Asian Studies. While serving as Chief Economist of USAID he played a prominent role in the founding of IFAD. He was a major reviewers of IFADs major book on poverty reduction – interacting with Michael Lipton, the principal author of that work.

He was awarded the Presidential Hunger Award (the White House USA) and the Wihuri Prize (Finland) for his work in reducing hunger in the world. He has won numerous prizes from professional associations for the quality of his research work on development. These include a prizes for best research and for research of continuing important value for his seminal book on the economics of agricultural development.

He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Agricultural Economics Association. He is author of the seminal text on agricultural development, nine other books and numerous journal articles. His most recent major contribution to thinking has been his work on employment multipliers from growth in farm incomes to the employment intensive, non-tradable rural non-farm sector.

A. David Meyer is Senior Anti-Corruption Advisor in the Europe and Eurasia Bureau Office of Economic Growth where he serves as Co-Chair of the Anti-Corruption Working Group. As Team Leader of the Legal and Institutional Reform Team, Mr. Meyer and his colleagues are responsible for providing strategic and programmatic support to USAID Missions in such areas as anti-corruption, economic governance, accounting reform, commercial law, and Alternative Dispute Resolution. For his leadership role in developing an analytical and programmatic paradigm for combating corruption and promoting integrity in the Europe and Eurasia region, Mr. Meyer received a Superior Unit Citation Award in 2002 and a Meritorious Honor Award in 2003.

Mr. Meyer holds Doctor of Jurisprudence and Master of Business Administration degrees from Indiana University in Bloomington. His international legal and business experience includes service as Resident Advisor to the Ministry of Trade and Foreign Economic Cooperation of the Republic of Albania and as Vice President and General Counsel of information technology, chemical engineering, and food processing companies. Prior to joining USAID, Mr. Meyer served as an arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association and as a certified mediator of commercial litigation in federal and state courts. As a corporate lawyer, Mr. Meyer concentrated on international joint ventures, commercial law transactions and dispute resolution, and advising start-up and emerging companies.

Russell Misheloff is a Senior Manager at the International Resources Group, Inc and the Deputy Manger for EPIQ II. Mr. Misheloff served as a Senior Policy Advisor on the EPIQ I IQC and brings 30 + years of experience working in development programs in more than 20 countries worldwide. He is experienced in the management and conduct of programs related to strategic planning, assessment of environmental and natural resource policy and management options, and strengthening of institutions that have environmental and natural resource policy analysis, management and regulatory functions. His work has involved policy and management responses to air and water pollution, efficient allocation and use of water resources, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, soil degradation, financing of urban environmental services, and provision of training in analytical approaches to environmental policy development and in economic valuation of environmental and natural resource investments. Mr. Misheloff previously served as Environmental Economist and Program Manager in USAID’s Office of Environment and Natural Resources. He holds an MA in Economics from American University and an MA in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania.

Carlos Alberto Sampaio Morgado, the current Minister of Industry and Trade in Mozambique, has over 35 years of experience working in the private sector and in trade development activities. He began his career as the Head of the Maintenance and Engineering Department of the Mozambican National Airline Company (DETA) where he was responsible for airline fleet management, cost control and financial aspect related to managing the national airline fleet. Minister Morgado was then appointed Adviser to the Executive Director of Linhas Aereas de Moçambique (LAM), the Mozambican National Airlines, in 1979. In 1980, Minister Morgado became the Technical Director for LAM, and in 1985, became the Deputy General Director of LAM, a position he held until 1999. Minister Morgado has served as a Board Member of several financial, hotel telecommunication and tourism-related companies. In 2000, he was appointed Minister of Industry and Trade in Mozambique, where he has been building trade capacity, creating a liberal and dynamic trade environment, fostering strong linkages with the private sector and working to more deeply integrate Mozambique into the international trading system. Minister Morgado has been actively involved in efforts to use trade as a vehicle for economic growth and poverty reduction. Since taking office, Minister Morgado has actively dialogued with the private sector in order to create a business environment that encourages private business activity and investment. He was responsible for developing several incentive schemes that enable Mozambique industry to import inputs duty free. Minister Morgado has also been a driving force behind Mozambique’s application to the Integrate Framework (IF) and to build the necessary capacity in the Ministry of Industry and Trade to effectively participate, implement and take advantage of opportunities afforded by the international trading system.

Richard Newfarmer is Economic Advisor in the International Trade Department and in the Prospects Group of the World Bank. Mr. Newfarmer was the lead author of the recent Global Economic Prospects 2004: Realizing the Development Promise of the Doha Agenda that analyzed key issues in the World Trade Organization’s on-going negotiations. In the two previous years, he led the teams writing the Global Economic Prospects 2003: Investing to Unlock Global Opportunities that took up the investment and competition aspects of the WTO discussions, and Global Economic Prospects 2002: Making Trade Work for the World’s Poor. Besides authoring numerous country studies at the World Bank on macroeconomic and public finance issues, he has also written extensively on foreign direct investment, with publications in the Cambridge Journal of Economics, Journal of Development Economics and Foreign Policy. Mr. Newfarmer was Lead Economist in the Chief Economist’s Office of East Asia during the Asia crisis (1997-2000), and before that he was the Lead Economist for the China and Mongolia Department from 1995 until July 1997. Prior to becoming Lead Economist, Mr. Newfarmer was Chief of the Industry and Energy Division in the China Department (1993–1995), where he supervised an ambitious program of lending to the power sector, among others. He was also Principal Economist for Argentina in the Latin American region (1988–1992) and has also worked on Chile, Brazil, and other Latin American countries. He joined the World Bank in 1983. Prior to joining the Bank, Mr. Newfarmer was a Senior Fellow at the Overseas Development Council, and served on the economics faculty at the University of Notre Dame. Mr. Newfarmer holds a PhD and two MAs from the University of Wisconsin, and BA from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He has also served on the Executive Council of the Latin American Studies Association.

Rolando Ossowski is Division Chief of the Fiscal Operations 2 Division in the Fiscal Affairs Department of the International Monetary Fund . He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics. He joined the IMF in 1987 and worked in the Western Hemisphere Department and the European and European II Departments before joining the Fiscal Affairs Department in 1998. Major interests are public finance, macroeconomics, and oil economics. He is a joint author of two IMF Occasional Papers: Fiscal and Macroeconomic Impact of Privatization (2000), and Stabilization and Savings Funds for Nonrenewable Resources: Experience and Fiscal Policy Implications (2001). He co-edited the book on "Fiscal Policy Formulation and Implementation in Oil-Producing Countries" recently published by the IMF.

Steve Parker, a senior economist with Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), has 25 years of experience analyzing international trade, macroeconomic, and development issues; designing and implementing policy reform and institution-building projects in developing economies; and organizing policy and research dialogue activities. Mr. Parker is currently serving in Vietnam, as the Chief of Party for the USAID-funded Support for Trade Acceleration Project. Before coming to DAI, he worked in policy analysis and project development positions in the U.S. government (Department of Labor, Congressional Budget Office, and USAID Mission in Jakarta, Indonesia), in a multilateral development bank (Asian Development Bank Institute in Tokyo, Japan), and in two leading non-government organizations (Harvard Institute for International Development in Jakarta, Indonesia, and The Asia Foundation in San Francisco, California). Mr. Parker’s professional contributions include operating the trade model used by the U.S. government to assess tariff proposals during the Tokyo Round of GATT negotiations, estimating effective rates of protection for the Indonesian economy and co-authoring a report to the U.S. Senate on The [Uruguay Round of] GATT Negotiations and U.S. Trade Policy.

Anthony J. Pellegrini, former Director of Transportation, Water and Sanitation and Urban Development at the World Bank, is a Centennial Group partner and member of the Board. He is chairman of the International Advisory Board of Paranacidade, a Brazilian development fund that lends to local governments; and a cofounder of the International Association of Municipal Development Funds. Until recently, he was a member of the Advisory Board of the Volpe Transportation center, a U.S. government-owned transportation research institute.

Mr. Pellegrini has extensive international experience in the field of urban development and infrastructure. As Director of Transportation, Water and Sanitation and Urban Development at the World Bank, Mr. Pellegrini had responsibility for development of global sector policy, development of partnerships with other institutions, provision of operational project support to regional urban sector units, identification of cross-regional best practice, research, web-based knowledge tools and development of training programs. He chaired the Transportation, Water and Sanitation and Urban Development Sector Boards of the World Bank, which brought together all regional sector managers in the Bank responsible for policy issues in these sectors.

Mr. Pellegrini has served as Division Chief, Technical Department, Europe and Central Asia, and Middle East and North Africa Regions, where he was responsible for infrastructure (including urban development) and the private provision of infrastructure services. He has also served as Division Chief in the Western Africa Department of the World Bank. Prior to joining the World Bank, Mr. Pellegrini was a policy analyst for the Auerbach Corporation and for the Research Analysis Corporation. Mr. Pellegrini received his doctorate degree from Stanford University.

Guillermo Perry was appointed Chief Economist of the Latin America and Carribean region of the World Bank in 1996. Prior to joining the World Bank, Dr. Perry served his native country, Colombia as Minister of Finance and Public Credit, Minister of Mining and Energy, Director of National Taxes, and Deputy Director of the Departamento Nacional de Planeacion y Consejo de Politica Economica (CONPES). He was also a member of the Constitutional Assembly and the Senate of the Republic. Dr. Perry was Director of two of Colombia’s leading economic think-tanks: FEDESARROLLO and the Center for Economic Development Studies. Dr. Perry holds a Ph.D. in Economics and Operational Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Steven Radelet is currently a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington D.C. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Africa, the Middle East, and Asia from January 2000 to June 2002. From 1990 to 2000, he was on the faculty of Harvard University, where he was a fellow at the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID), director of the Institute’s macroeconomics program, and a lecturer on economics and public policy. From 1991 to 1995, he was HIID’s resident adviser on macroeconomic policy to the Indonesian Ministry of Finance in Jakarta. He served in a similar capacity with the Ministry of Finance and Trade in The Gambia from 1986 to 1988. He was also a Peace Corps volunteer in Western Samoa from 1981 to 1983. He is the co-author of a leading undergraduate text, Economics of Development. His research and publications have focused on foreign aid, economic growth, financial crises, and trade policy in developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia.

Robert W. Rafuse, Jr. a member of the Fiscal Reform in Support of Trade Liberalization Project technical assistance team, is a public finance economist with more than 30 years of professional experience in intergovernmental fiscal relations, local government finance, and tax policy in the United States and abroad. Dr. Rafuse has served as a senior advisor to U.S., Russian, Polish, Macedonian, and Indian policymakers in the development and analysis of the legal framework for local government and fiscal policy, with special emphasis on intergovernmental fiscal relations. He also has extensive management experience in government, in research and consulting organizations, and as Chief of Party of large overseas projects sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Fernando Ramos, a Managing Director with BearingPoint Inc., is a public sector economist with 15 years of project management experience in developing and transitional economies. Dr. Ramos serves as home office Project Manager for the USAID-financed Economic Governance Project in Afghanistan and the Economic Policy and Institutional Reform Project in Kosovo. In this capacity, he oversees the design and implementation of fiscal and financial reform reforms, as well as the development of commercial laws and policies to promote private sector development in post-conflict environments. He has also served as Chief of Party for the USAID Corporate Tax Project in Egypt and as Deputy Project Manager for the USAID NIS Fiscal Reform Project.

Kishore Rao is an economic consultant with wide-ranging expertise in international trade, investment, competitiveness, economic zones, regional cooperation, private sector, and private infrastructure development. He has successfully undertaken consulting engagements in over 50 countries worldwide. Mr. Rao is BearingPoint’s Managing Director overseeing the company’s Trade, Investment and Infrastructure Practice. Previously, Mr. Rao served as chief executive of a leading trade and investment consultancy, The Services Group. He focused on WTO accession and implementation, regional trade integration, foreign investment promotion, economic zones, private infrastructure provision, and ICT and e-government projects. Prior to that, Mr. Rao served as a vice president of an international trading company

Joseph S. (Joe) Ryan Jr. is Associate Mission Director for Economic Growth, USAID/Cairo. Since late 2003 he has led a Directorate with 48 staff, including 9 U.S. Foreign Service Officers, and budgets averaging $400 million annually. The portfolio includes cash transfers conditioned on economic policy reform, a major import financing program, macroeconomic stabilization support, financial-sector modernization, microfinance, trade policy and customs modernization, and development of industries based on agriculture and information technology. He is responsible for leading a major, ongoing restructuring of staffing and program strategy based on the results of a State-USAID Program Review.

He has previously served as Chief, Office of Economic Development and Governance, USAID/Manila (1997-2003); Program Economist for USAIDs in Managua, Islamabad, and Kinshasa (1984-97), and Bureau for Program and Policy Coordination, AID/Washington (1981-84). His university experience includes Assistant Professor at Loyola University of Chicago ((1971-81); Visiting Assistant Professor at Northwestern University (1978-79); and Fulbright Senior Lecturer, Columba's College, Bihar, India (1977-78). He holds a Ph.D. in Economics, 1977, UC-Berkeley (NSF Graduate Fellowship), and an A.B. in History, 1971, Stanford University.

Jolyne Sanjak is an agricultural economist with specialization in development economics. She has over 15 years of experience relating to land tenure issues, agricultural productivity, land markets, and property registration. Dr. Sanjak is currently employed by the United States Agency for International Development as an economic growth and rural development specialist in the Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean. Her main areas of emphasis are property rights and land policy issues, remittances, finance and, more generally, rural livelihood improvement. As the Bureau’s principle advisor on land policy, she developed and is leading the implementation of the Inter-Summit Property Systems Initiative in response to 1998 and 2001 Summit of the Americas mandates, a regional initiative that includes both urban and rural concerns. As an expert on rural economy, Dr. Sanjak has led the development of a Bureau framework for strengthening investments in rural economic development and of a new initiative to promote rural prosperity in Central America. She also participates on several agency-wide groups, including the Land Markets Advisory Group, Conflict Management and Mitigation Sector Council and Agriculture Sector Council. Prior to working for USAID, beginning in 1998, Jolyne was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics joint with the Department of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, at the University at Albany, State University of New York and served as Research Associate at the University of Wisconsin. During that time, she engaged in many consulting assignments on land tenure and land markets with various donor agencies including USAID, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the United Nations. USAID assignments include serving as the Team Leader for the Land Tenure and Agricultural Productivity Project in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and as the Project Manager and Land Markets/Land Tenure Specialist for the Land Tenure Unit of the Policy Analysis and Implementation Project in Honduras.

Anwar Shah is Lead Public Sector Management Specialist and Program Leader for Public Sector Governance with the World Bank Institute. He has previously served the Ministry of Finance, Government of Canada and Government of Alberta, Canada and held responsibilities for federal-provincial and provincial-local fiscal relations respectively. He has advised the Governments of Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, South Africa, and Turkey on fiscal federalism issues. He has lectured at the University of Ottawa, Canada; Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan; Duke; Harvard; MIT; University of Southern California, Peking and Wuhan Universities, China. His current research interests are in the areas of governance, fiscal federalism, fiscal reform, and global environment. He has published several books and monographs on these subjects including The Reform of Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations in Developing and Transition Economies (World Bank 1994) and a 1995 Oxford University Press Book on Fiscal Incentives for Investment and Innovation. His articles have appeared in leading economic and policy journals. He also serves as a referee and on editorial advisory boards for leading economic journals.

Richard H. Sines is Senior Economic Advisor to USAID for Iraq Reconstruction. This job includes backstopping the USAID $80 million per annum economic governance program--the largest of its kind since the Marshall Plan. A BearingPoint-led consortium implements the program covering Tax Policy/Administration; Budget Execution/Preparation; Inter-Governmental Finance; Bank Strengthening/Supervision; Currency Conversion; Central Bank Currency Auction/Monetary Policy; Microfinance/Small & Medium Enterprise Credit; Insurance; Inter-Bank Payments/Direct Deposits; Oil for Food; Commercial Legal Reform; Business Centers; Electricity Master Plan, Cost of Service and State-Owned Enterprise Strengthening; and Telecommunications Master Plan, Institutional Strengthening and Regulatory Agency. Richard has resided and worked in the Philippines, Ivory Coast, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, France, Germany, and Egypt. Richard has consulted widely for both the public and private sectors. In recent years, he has consulted primarily in North Africa, Near East and Africa. He worked with USAID/PPC between 1988 and 1992. Richard holds a Ph.D. in economics and a Masters in mathematics from Ohio State University. He taught at George Washington University and Ohio State University; and was Chief Economist for the American Apparel Manufacturing Association.

Alex Segura-Ubiergo is an Economist in the Fiscal Affairs Department of the International Monetary Fund. He is currently the Fund's fiscal economist for Senegal, and also conducts comparative policy development and research work in the area of public expenditure policy. Prior to joining the Fiscal Affairs Department, he was at the IMF's Independent Evaluation Office, where he was a co-author of the reports "Fiscal Adjustment in IMF-supported Programs" and the "Report on the Evaluation of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility". He has published papers on the impact of globalization and democratization on social spending in Latin America; on the impact of IMF-supported programs on social spending, and on the reconstruction of fiscal institutions in post-conflict countries. He holds Master’s degrees in Economics and Political Science from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and a Ph.D from Columbia University. His dissertation "Globalization, Domestics Politics and the Welfare State in the Developing World: Latin America in Comparative Perspective" won the Mancur Olson Award for the best dissertation in Political Economy in 2001-2002.

Sam Skogstad is widely recognized as an expert on macroeconomic stabilization and financial markets reform. In addition to his academic career as an economics professor at Georgia State University (GSU), Dr. Skogstad’s career spanned 20 years in various positions with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), including Chief Economist (among others in Chile, Jamaica and Guatemala) and Director of USAID’s Office of Economic Restructuring, Bureau for Europe and the NIS. While retired from USAID and GSU, Dr. Skogstad continues to work with developing and transition countries to help refine monetary policy, establish institutional frameworks in the financial sector, and assist governments with designing fiscal reform programs that help achieve macroeconomic policy goals. He has written extensively about policy making in open economies. Currently, he is leading an effort under the Fiscal Reform in Support of Trade Liberalization Project to capture and document success stories from US Government technical assistance in fiscal reform.

Randall L. Tobias was sworn in as United States Global AIDS Coordinator on October 6, 2003 with the rank of Ambassador. Ambassador Tobias is responsible for overseeing all U.S. international HIV/AIDS assistance and coordinating the efforts of the various agencies and departments of the United States Government that deliver it, and reports directly to Secretary of State Colin Powell. From 1993-1999, he served as Chairman, President and CEO of Eli Lilly and Company, where under Tobias’s leadership, the company experienced a dramatic turnaround and enjoyed one of the most successful periods in its history. Prior to that, he played a major role in helping to lead AT&T through the difficult period following the breakup of the Bell System in 1984, serving as AT&T’s Vice Chairman from 1986 until 1993 and, additionally, as Chairman and CEO of AT&T International from 1991 until 1993. After stepping down from his post at Lilly in January 1999, he focused his attention on a number of business, community and philanthropic interests and on teaching and writing. His book on leadership lessons learned, Put The Moose On The Table, written with his son, Todd Tobias, was published in early 2003. Among his honors, Tobias was named Pharmaceutical Industry CEO of the Year by the Wall Street Transcript in 1995, and CEO of the Year in 1996 by Working Mother magazine. In 1997, he was named one of the “Top Twenty-Five Managers of the Year” by Business Week, Magazine. He was also named the “Norman Vincent Peale Humanitarian of the Year” in 1997. Ambassador Tobias has served on a number of corporate boards, including AT&T, Eli Lilly and Company, Chemical Bank of New York, Agilent Technologies, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Knight-Ridder, Inc., and ConocoPhillips Petroleum Company. Ambassador Tobias served for twelve years as a trustee of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and thirteen years as a trustee of Duke University, including three years as chair of the board. Ambassador Tobias has been awarded honorary Doctor of Laws degrees by Indiana University, Wabash College, Butler University, Gallaudet University, and Ball State University, and an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree by Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. He has also been awarded the Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis (IUPUI) Urban University Medal. Ambassador Tobias has served on a number of corporate boards, including AT&T, Eli Lilly and Company, Chemical Bank of New York, Agilent Technologies, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Knight-Ridder, Inc., and ConocoPhillips Petroleum Company. He also served for twelve years as a trustee of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and thirteen years as a trustee of Duke University, including three years as chair of the board. Ambassador Tobias has been awarded honorary Doctor of Laws degrees by Indiana University, Wabash College, Butler University, Gallaudet University, and Ball State University, and an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree by Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. He has also been awarded the Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis (IUPUI) Urban University Medal. Ambassador Tobias earned a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University in 1964.

Svetlana Tsalik is the director of the Revenue Watch, a program of the Open Society Institute’s Central Eurasia Project. As such, she conducts research, works with local activists, and conducts advocacy in support of improved transparency and accountability in the management of petroleum revenues in developing countries. Prior to this she worked as a management consultant for A.T. Kearney in New York. In 2000, she graduated with a Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Stanford University, with a focus on center-regional relations in post-Soviet Russia.

Raul Urteaga Trani serves as Economic Counselor for the Embassy of Mexico, NAFTA Office in Washington, D.C. Mr. Urteaga was one of the Mexican delegates in the NAFTA negotiating process covering several provisions of the Agreement, including Technical Standards, Environment, and Investment clauses. He was also involved in the process that created the North American Development Bank and the U.S.-Mexico Border Environment Cooperation Commission. From 1991 to 1993, Mr. Urteaga worked in Ottawa, Canada, assisting Mexico’s negotiating team on the NAFTA negotiating process. Prior to that appointment, he worked for four years at the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington, D.C. During his tenure at the OAS, Mr. Urteaga worked in field projects in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and the Eastern Caribbean.

Mr. Urteaga holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the Universidad de Coahuila, Mexico, and a master’s degree from the University of Akron, Ohio’s urban and regional planning program. In addition, he has pursued numerous executive courses on trade and regional integration, privatization of state enterprises, and corporate governance at Harvard’s JFK School of Government, and at the World Bank’s Economic Development Institute. Mr. Urteaga is fluent in both English and Spanish.

James L. Walker is Senior Economic Advisor for USAID/ANE. His primary responsibilities include financial sector reform, trade liberalization, and SME development in East Asia and the Middle East. Previous USAID experience includes being a program economist in Haiti, LAC, CDIE, ANE, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, and as a consultant on USAID projects for trade reform in Egypt and competitiveness in Sri Lanka. Prior to USAID, he was an associate professor of economics and director of economic research at the University of Nevada-Reno and assistant professor at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin.

Andrew Warner recently joined the Millennium Challenge Corporation in a senior position to work on economic research and monitoring and evaluation. Previous to this he was a visiting scholar at the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Center for Global Development. He was also a research fellow at Harvard University’s Center for International Development and the Harvard Institute for International Development. He obtained his Ph.D in Economics in 1991 at Harvard University. His research has been on the driving forces behind economic growth, and on international trade and finance. For many years he was also a primary author of the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report.

Robert Wuertz heads a combined Economic Growth/Democracy & Governance office at the USAID Mission in the Philippines which also administers the Mission's conflict Strategic Objective. In recent years, the office has managed expenditures of approximately $30 million annually. Before coming to the Philippines, Dr. Wuertz was responsible for a $200 million per year conditionality-based cash transfer program in USAID/Cairo. Prior to that, he was the Program Economist in Accra, Ghana.

Clifford Zinnes is Director of Research Coordination at the IRIS Center and Affiliate Faculty at the School of Public Policy, both at the University of Maryland. Specializing in the New Institutional Economics, current applications include assessing “fragile” states, improving local governance in Morocco, corruption in environmental management in Romania, SME relationships in The Philippines, donor effectiveness, and measurement of the shadow economy. As an economic policy advisor, Dr. Zinnes has worked in over twenty countries on five continents. Formerly a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, during the 1990s, he was also an Institute Associate at the Harvard Institute for International Development, where he spent five years as a resident in Romania as a senior policy advisor to the ministers of Reform, Privatization, European Integration, and Environment. Over this period he co-authored a privatization law and many of the country's environmental laws, which led to successful institutional reforms. Recent publications include the institutional prerequisites for trade liberalization and privatization to increase economic performance, the role of culture in economic “retrogression”, improving international competitiveness in transition economies, and the causes and consequences of shadow economy. An underlying theme in his work is the importance of institutions, culture, and transaction costs in the development process. In addition to consulting with most of the major, multilateral, technical assistance agencies, he has held positions in the U.S. government and the United Nations, and has set up an international environmental think-tank. Dr. Zinnes holds a PhD in international economics from the University of Pennsylvania.