African Development Bank
Charles Owusu Boamah, Senior Vice President
Mr. Charles Owusu Boamah has been Senior Vice President of African Development Bank since April 28, 2017. Having served as Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer of the African Development Bank for the past six years and as Acting First Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Charles Boamah, comes into the new role with solid first-hand understanding and knowledge of the finances, operations and administration of the African Development Bank. Boamah is a globally respected executive with over 35 years of successively challenging leadership experiences in and outside of Africa.
Over the past six years, Boamah has successfully led major resource mobilization drives for the Bank, including the most recent replenishment of the African Development Fund, the establishment in 2015 of the Africa Growing Together Fund, a USD 2 billion co-financing facility, successful negotiation of a USD 3 billion co-financing facility under the Enhanced Private Sector Assistance Facility for Africa, among others. He led the task force for the establishment of Africa50, an innovative vehicle for accelerated infrastructure delivery in Africa.
Boamah currently chairs the Governing Council of the African Legal Support Facility and the Steering Committee of the African Financial Markets Initiative. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Africa50 and the Board of Governors of the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development (PTA) Bank. He previously served on the Board of Directors of the African Export Import Bank (Afreximbank), the Audit Advisory Committee of UNICEF and a couple of Global Action Committees of the World Economic Forum.
He joined the African Development Bank in 1996 from Wells Fargo Bank (after the merger with First Interstate Bank where he previously worked), where, as Vice-President of Accounting Policy and Research, he provided guidance to deal teams in the structuring of complex transactions, among other responsibilities.
Charles Boamah holds a B.Sc. (First Class Honors) in Business Administration from the University of Ghana, Legon and a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) in Finance from the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. He is also a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) from the State of California, USA.
Asian Development Bank
Takehiko Nakao, President
Takehiko Nakao is the President of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Chairperson of ADB's Board of Directors. He was elected President by ADB's Board of Governors and assumed office in April 2013. Before joining ADB, Mr. Nakao was the Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs at the Ministry of Finance of Japan. In a career spanning more than three decades, Mr. Nakao has gained extensive experience in international finance and development. He has held senior positions in the Ministry of Finance in Japan, which he joined in 1978, including Director-General of the International Bureau, where he fostered close ties with leading figures in the Asia-Pacific region, and G20 nations. He was assigned as Minister at the Embassy of Japan in Washington D.C., between 2005 and 2007, and from 1994 to 1997 served as economist and advisor at the International Monetary Fund.
He has published books and numerous papers on financial and economic issues, and in 2010 and 2011 was a Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo. Born in 1956, Mr. Nakao holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Tokyo and a Master of Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley.
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
Suma Chakrabarti, President
Sir Suma Chakrabarti, born in 1959 in West Bengal, India, is the sixth President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The EBRD's Board of Governors re-elected Sir Suma as President of the Bank for a second four-year term in 2016. He began his first term in 2012, having replaced Thomas Mirow.
Sir Suma has extensive experience in international development economics and policy-making, as well as in designing and implementing wider public service reform.
Before arriving at the EBRD, he held the position of Permanent Secretary at the British Ministry of Justice and was its most senior civil servant. Prior to this, from 2002, he headed the UK’s Department for International Development (formerly the Overseas Development Administration (ODA) where he worked closely with economies undergoing substantial reform in eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and the Middle East and North Africa. Sir Suma is notable for playing a key role developing the UK's successful Know-How Fund for Central and Eastern Europe and worked with the European Commission in improving its programs in the Middle East and North Africa.
Sir Suma also worked in the late 1990s in the UK Treasury, where he was responsible for UK public expenditure, and in the early 2000s in the Cabinet Office, where he led on cross-departmental strategic issues and subsequently the management of the Cabinet agenda.
After studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the University of Oxford, Sir Suma took a Masters in Development Economics at the University of Sussex. He also holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Sussex and East Anglia and the Bucharest University of Economic Sciences.
European Investment Bank
Werner Hoyer, President
Werner Hoyer has been President of the European Investment Bank and Chairman of its Board of Directors since January 1, 2012. Prior to that he was Minister of State (Deputy Foreign Minister) at the German Foreign Office, responsible for Political and Security Affairs, European Affairs, United Nations and Arms Control from 2009-2011; and Deputy Chairman and Foreign Affairs Spokesman of the FDP (Free Democratic Party) parliamentary group from 2002-2009.
Hoyer graduated as an economist from the University of Cologne in 1974, and worked as a scientific assistant there until 1984. He earned a doctorate in economics in 1977. From 1985 to 1987, he worked with the Carl Duisberg Society in Cologne, and taught international economics at the University of Cologne until 1994.
In 1972, he became a member of the FDP, and was a board member of the Young Liberals from 1983 to 1986. He chaired the local party board in Cologne from 1984 to 1992, and became a member of the FDP board in North Rhine-Westphalia in 1984 and the federal FDP board in 1994. He was Secretary General of his party from 1993 to 1994. From 1997 to 2000, he was Vice President and from 2000 to 2005, President, of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party. Hoyer holds a PhD in economics (Cologne University; research at UCLA) and a Diploma in economics (Cologne University). He was born in 1951 in Wuppertal, Germany, and is married with two children.
Inter-American Development Bank
Julie T. Katzman, Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer
Julie T. Katzman, a U.S. citizen, is the Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer of the Inter-American Development Bank (the “IDB”); the largest provider of development finance to the public and private sectors in Latin America and Caribbean. As a long-time investment banker focused primarily on private equity, Ms. Katzman developed well recognized expertise in financial structures and products across numerous industries. Ms. Katzman joined the IDB Group in 2009 as General Manager of the Multilateral Investment Fund (the “MIF”). Eighteen months later, she was appointed Executive Vice President of the IDB.
Ms. Katzman is currently responsible for managing the overall operations of the IDB. She is pioneering an institutional transformation to further the IDB’s emphasis on achieving, measuring and reporting tangible results, and improving access and availability of these results through innovative management and visualization tools such as MapAmericas. Ms. Katzman is also championing progressive diversity and inclusion and women’s economic empowerment agendas.
Ms. Katzman has served on a number of corporate and not-for-profit boards. Currently, she serves on the Boards of Directors of the MacArthur Foundation and the International Center for Research on Women (“ICRW”) and the Board of Advisors of Instituto de Empresa in Madrid.
Ms. Katzman graduated summa cum laude from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and earned her Master’s in Management with Distinction from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University. Ms. Katzman also attended American University in Cairo and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
The World Bank
Kristalina Georgieva, Chief Executive Officer
Kristalina Georgieva is the Chief Executive Officer of the World Bank. As the CEO for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Development Association, the World Bank’s lending arms for middle-income and poor countries, Georgieva will build support across the international community to help mobilize resources and develop more effective solutions for the poor at the scale required.
Previously, Georgieva, a Bulgarian national, helped shape the agenda of the European Union since 2010, first as Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, where she managed one of the world's largest humanitarian aid budget and established herself as a global champion for resilience.
As the European Commission Vice President for Budget and Human Resources, Georgieva was in charge of the European Union's €161 billion (US $175bn) budget and 33,000 staff across its institutions around the world. She tripled funding available to the refugee crisis in Europe and drove rapid progress towards achieving a target of 40 percent women in management by 2019 in order to improve the Commission's gender balance.
Georgieva is widely respected for her efforts to mobilize the international community to find innovative solutions to today's complex challenges. As the co-chair of the United Nations Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing, she secured the adoption of a much more effective system to meet the needs of record numbers of vulnerable people.
Before joining the European Commission, Georgieva held multiple positions at the World Bank. In her most recent role as the Vice President and Corporate Secretary (2008-2010), she was the interlocutor between the World Bank Group’s senior management, its Board of Directors and its shareholder countries. In the wake of the 2008 international financial crisis, she played a key role in the World Bank's governance reform and accompanying capital increase.
From 2007 to 2008, Georgieva was Director for Sustainable Development in charge of policy and lending operations in infrastructure, urban development, agriculture, environment and social development, including support to fragile and conflict-affected countries. In this role she oversaw around 60% of lending operations of the World Bank Group.
Prior to that, in 2004, Georgieva was made World Bank Director for the Russian Federation, based in Moscow. Then she became Director in charge of the World Bank environmental strategy, policies and lending. Following that assignment, she became Director for Environment and Social Development for the East Asia and Pacific Region. Georgieva started working at the World Bank in 1993 as an Environmental Economist.
Kristalina Georgieva was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1953. She holds a Ph.D. in Economic Science and a M.A. in Political Economy and Sociology from the University of National and World Economy, Sofia, where she was an Associate Professor between 1977 and 1991.
Tanya Beckett, BBC World News
Tanya Beckett has worked in broadcasting and the media for over twenty years. She started out at the FT, then went to work for CNBC, Sky News, CNN and since 1998, the BBC.
She has worked on a variety of programmes on BBC World News, the Newschannel, Radio 4 and BBC1 and BBC2 including Our World, Working Lunch, Today, World Business report, Newsnight and World Business Report. She also spent 3 years living in and reporting from New York.
Tanya has a degree from Oxford University in Metallurgy and Materials Science and spent 5 years as an investment banker in Frankfurt and London.
