Carolina Sánchez-Páramo
Carolina is the Senior Director of the Poverty and Equity Global Practice (GP) at the World Bank. During her tenure at the Bank, she has also worked on operations, policy advice and analytical activities in Eastern Europe, Latin America and South Asia, and was part of the core team working on the WDR2012, “Gender Equality and Development”. Her main areas of interest and expertise include labor economics, poverty and distributional analysis, gender equality and welfare impacts of public policy.
Ceyla Pazarbasioglu
Ceyla Pazarbasioglu is Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions (EFI) at the World Bank Group (WBG) since October 1, 2018.
In this role, Ceyla provides strategic leadership to the best expertise from around the World Bank and International Finance Corporation (IFC) to help low- and middle-income countries build the foundations for inclusive and sustainable growth and, thereby, make progress towards achieving the World Bank Group’s twin goals of reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity. She oversees a portfolio of nearly $30 billion of operational and policy work and advisory engagements in the WBG Global Practices of Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation; Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment; Governance; and Poverty and Equity.
Elisabeth Mason
Elisabeth Mason is the Founding Director of the Stanford Poverty and Technology Lab (formerly Stanford Technology, Opportunity and Poverty Lab or STOP) and a Senior Advisor at the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.
Previously, Elisabeth was the Co-Founder and CEO of Single Stop, a national anti-poverty initiative. A native of East Harlem where she developed her passion for social justice, Elisabeth was named "New Yorker of the Year" in 2015 by NY1 for her groundbreaking work fighting poverty, which reached nearly 20 percent of low-income New Yorkers.
Elisabeth is an expert on venture philanthropy, children’s rights, start-up organizations, and poverty-fighting programs. Under her leadership, Single Stop grew rapidly to serve over 1.5 million families, drawing down nearly $4 billion in impact in its first 8 years, and won numerous awards, including 2 White House Social Innovation Fund grants and Top Ten in Global Social Impact from Fast Company. At Atlantic Philanthropies, she helped develop a $1 billion, 10-year spend-down plan to help disadvantaged children.
She was also a Managing Director for six years at the Robin Hood Foundation, a Senior Advisor at Innovative Philanthropy, and practiced law on Wall Street at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. Elisabeth holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from Harvard and a Law Degree from Columbia.
Ferid Belhaj
Ferid Belhaj took up the position of World Bank Group Vice President for Middle East and North Africa on July 1, 2018. Prior to this, Mr. Belhaj served 15 months as the Chief of Staff of the President of the World Bank Group.
From 2012 to 2017, Mr. Belhaj was World Bank Director for the Middle East, in charge of World Bank work programs in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Iran, based in Beirut, Lebanon. In this capacity, he led the Bank engagement on the Syrian refugee crisis and its impact on the region, including the creation of new financing instruments to help countries hosting forcibly displaced people; the ramping up of the Bank drive towards the reconstruction and recovery of Iraq during and after the ISIS invasion and the scaling up of the Bank's commitments to Lebanon and Jordan.
Before taking up his Mashreq assignment, Mr. Belhaj served as World Bank Director for the Pacific Department (2009-2012), where he developed a regional strategy that scaled up Bank engagement in small and fragile states, and tripled lending operations of the International Development Agency, one of the five institutions under the umbrella of the World Bank Group that provides interest-free loans and grants for Low-Income Countries.
From 2007 to 2010, Mr. Belhaj was the World Bank’s Special Representative to the United Nations in New York, where he engaged with various UN agencies on a range of programs, mainly climate change, the Millennium Development Goals, fragile and post-conflict states and the global financial and food crises.
Ferid Belhaj served as World Bank Country Manager for Morocco (2002-2007), where he developed a new and multifaceted dialogue with one of the best performing Middle-Income countries.
A Tunisian national, Mr. Belhaj joined the Bank in 1996 as Senior Counsel in the Legal Department, managing a number of legal and judicial reform projects. He also served as Bank Counsel for countries, including Egypt, Morocco, Iran, Algeria and Thailand.
Joseph Stiglitz
Joseph E. Stiglitz received his Ph.D from MIT in 1967, became a full professor at Yale in 1970, and in 1979 was awarded the prestigious John Bates Clark Award. He has taught at Princeton, Stanford, and MIT and was the Drummond Professor and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He is now University Professor at Columbia University and Chair of Columbia University's Committee on Global Thought. He co-founded and directs the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information, and he was a lead author of the 1995 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Stiglitz was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1993-95, during the Clinton administration, and served as CEA chairman from 1995–97. He then became Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 1997–2000.
In addition to writing widely used textbooks, Stiglitz founded The Journal of Economic Perspectives.
His latest book, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future, was published by W,W, Norton & Company in June 2012.
