Victoria Stanley
Senior Land Administration Specialist, World Bank
Ms. Stanley is a Senior Land Administration Specialist at the World Bank. Ms. Stanley has worked in the Bank’s Africa, Europe and Central Asia, and Latin America and Caribbean regions on land administration, land management, and land governance and policy. She is currently serving as the Gender Focal Point for the Global Practice on Urban, Resilience, and Land and has worked extensively on women’s land rights issues. She also has experience in the areas of rural and municipal development, gender issues, information technology, public service delivery, institutional reform, and strategic planning and budgeting.
Ruth Meinzen-Dick
Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI, USA
Ruth Meinzen-Dick has over 25 years of experience in transdisciplinary research. One of her major research areas deals with how institutions and policies affect the way people manage natural resources, especially land and water. She also studies gender issues in agriculture, with a particular focus on gender differences in control over assets, and the impact of agricultural research on poverty. She is the author of over 150 peer-reviewed publications based on this research. In addition to leading numerous large research programs, she is the Coordinator of the CGIAR program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi), and co-leader of IFPRI’s research theme on Strengthening Institutions and Governance. Much of her research has been in South Asia and Africa south of the Sahara.
Alexandra Horst
Evaluation Officer, World Bank
Alexandra Horst is an Evaluation Officer with IEG's Sustainable Development Unit and the agriculture thematic focal point for IEG project evaluations. Alexandra has worked five years in the Agriculture and Food GP, in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) and Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) regions, where she provided support to lending and non-lending projects on productive partnerships, rural competitiveness, agricultural modernization, digital agriculture, and sustainable productive landscapes projects. Alexandra holds a Ph.D. in Development Economics from ETH Zurich (Switzerland), a Master of Science in Economics from Maastricht University (Netherlands), and a post-graduate Certificate of Advanced Studies in International Economic Policy Research from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (Germany).
Joao Montalvao
Senior Economist, World Bank
Joao Montalvao is a development economist at the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab, where he is the Thematic Leader for Property Rights. He conducts randomized control trials, generating evidence to improve policy aimed at promoting women's economic empowerment in Africa. Joao has a Ph.D. in economics from the University College London.
Mercedes Stickler
Agriculture Economist, World Bank
M. Mercedes Stickler is an Agriculture Economist at the World Bank, where she works to improve the sustainability and profitability of smallholder agriculture and to secure rural land tenure in Africa and South Asia. She has led land tenure research and operations in more than 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as in Cambodia, Myanmar, and India
Fiza Salim
Operations Officer, IFC
Fiza is an Operations Officer in IFC’s Financial Institutions Group Advisory Services Asia Team. Here, she works on institutional capacity building on Digital Financial Services and Supply Chain Finance, with a special focus on increasing inclusion for women. Prior to joining the IFC, she has worked on agricultural supply chain financing, leveraging private sector investments into agricultural value chains, and on warehouse receipt financing across Fiji, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Kenya.
Shilpa Vasavada
Consultant, IFC
Shilpa Vasavada is a consultant at IFC working around gender mainstreaming in natural resources, specifically agriculture, water and forestry issues. She is closely associated with networks of development organizations working with women farmers both at state and the national level in India. She is a trained Social Scientist from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (India).
Arijit Chanda
Consultant, IFC
Arijit is a chartered and cost accountant by qualification and has over 28 years of multifaceted experience both in start-up and established businesses covering financial services - NBFC, banking, and process outsourcing. He has covered a gamut of functional areas of business development, strategic planning, risk management and analytics, internal audit, and organizational excellence. He has also managed diversified and cross-functional teams. As a banking consultant with IFC since 2016, Arijit has done advisory assignments in SCF and Gender Finance in South and East Asia.