Who We Are

Solange Baptiste is Executive Director of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC). She leads community activists and allies across the globe to deliver ITPC’s mission to enable people in need to access optimal and affordable HIV treatment through treatment education, demand creation, community-based monitoring and interventions to make medicines more affordable. Solange has over 15 years of global program management and advocacy experience and specialises in monitoring and evaluation. She has a depth of knowledge in social epidemiology, health financing and community systems strengthening in the developing world through her work on USAID/PEPFAR health and development, bilateral and multi-county projects across Africa and Asia. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Tuskegee University and her Master of Science in Population and International Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Solange is committed to ensuring that the voice of affected communities contributes to and influences the decisions and policies that affect their lives.

Annabelle Burgett is a Program Officer in the Development Policy and Finance team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In this role, she leads our ODA policy and advocacy portfolio, and works on issues of multilateral financing. She partners with think tanks, civil society advocates and aid policy bodies to improve the allocation and impact of international development finance to alleviate extreme poverty. Before joining the foundation, Annabelle worked at the International Growth Centre, a research organization that aims to support sustainable growth in developing countries by providing demand-led policy advice based on frontier research. Annabelle serves on the board of NARAL Pro-Choice Washington. She holds an MPA in International Development from the London School of Economics and a BS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.

Annabelle is thrilled to participate in this working group – the importance of international, public, concessional finance is more apparent than ever. We need to create space for new voices, approaches and political leadership that can deliver the resources required to build a more resilient, just and equal world.

Anton Ofield-Kerr is the Executive Director of Equal International a niche group focused on supporting policies and programmes that promote the inclusion of the most marginalised in policy development and program delivery, and has been supporting thought leadership on the future of aid in collaboration with a number of partners for some years. Anton began his career as a nurse in South Africa specialising in intensive care medicine before moving into policy and international development. He is a specialist in policy and strategy development as well as facilitating multi sectoral collaborations. Anton has been involved in many initiatives which have shifted policies, introduced innovations and raised resources for development challenges relating to HIV, health and human rights with a focused on meeting the needs of marginalised communities and those at risk of being ‘left behind’.

Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi is the Executive Vice President at the African Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET) – a pan-African economic policy institute supporting Africa’s long-term growth through transformation. Prior to joining ACET, she was the Director of Investments at The Power of Nutrition. Previous positions include Director for Programme Policy and Quality (PPQ) at Save the Children UK and a number of Private Sector Development (PSD) specialist positions at the UK Department for International Development (DFID) over 15 years. In her last role at DFID, she was a Deputy Director with responsibility for PSD policy and technical specialists across the Department.

Mavis has over 20 years of international development experience in Africa, Asia and Eastern Caribbean. She has led multi-sectoral teams in both government and non-governmental organisations to develop and successfully implement programmes in the social and economic sectors in over 30 countries. She is currently a Trustee of Sightsavers and a board member of The Coalition for Global Prosperity

She is a political economist by training and has an MPhil from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. Her publications include Binding Constraints to Growth in Nigeria (Oxford University Press, 2008) and Growth and Competitiveness (World Bank, 2007).

Paulo Esteves is an Associate Professor at the International Relations Institute of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and the Director of the BRICS Policy Center. Dr. Esteves holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and has published a series of articles and book chapters in the areas of international development, emerging powers, and BRICS. Currently, Dr. Esteves’ research focuses on Development Cooperation and South-South Cooperation, particularly with regards to (i) the 2030 Agenda and the Paris agreement implementation, (ii) financing for development, and (iii) Global Public Investment. He served as a consultant of the UNDP, ECOSOC, UNDESA, and GPEDC. He is a founding member of the Brazilian Association of International Relations (ABRI) of which he was president from 2011 to 2014.

Jayati Ghosh is Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and from January 2020 will join the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA. She has authored and/or edited 18 books (including “Never Done and Poorly Paid: Women’s Work in Globalising India”, Women Unlimited, New Delhi 2009; and the co-edited “Elgar Handbook of Alternative Theories of Economic Development, 2014)) and nearly 200 scholarly articles. She has received several prizes, including for distinguished contributions to the social sciences in India in 2015; the International Labour Organisation’s Decent Work Research Prize for 2010; the NordSud Prize for Social Sciences 2010, Italy. She has advised governments in India and other countries, including as Chairperson of the Andhra Pradesh Commission on Farmers’ Welfare in 2004, and Member of the National Knowledge Commission of India (2005-09). She is the Executive Secretary of International Development Economics Associates, an international network of heterodox development economists. She has consulted for international organisations including ILO, UNDP, UNCTAD, UN-DESA, UNRISD and UN Women and is member of several international commissions, including the International Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT) and the Commission for Global Economic Transformation of INET. She writes regularly for popular media like newspapers, journals and blogs.

Jonathan Glennie is a writer, campaigner and consultant on human rights, international cooperation, sustainable development and poverty. His work looks in particular at the changing nature of international cooperation as dominant paradigms and global economic relationships evolve. He has held senior positions in several international organisations, including Save the Children, Christian Aid and Ipsos. He has published two books on aid and cooperation (The trouble with aid: why less could mean more for Africa and Aid, growth and poverty with Andy Sumner) and helped set up The Guardian‘s Global Development website, for which he was a regular columnist. As a consultant, he has worked with governments, international agencies and civil society organisations as they renew their strategies for a new era. His book The Future of Aid: Global Public Investment, was published by Routledge in November 2020. He lives with his family in Colombia and is the current Director of Equal Internationals Centre for Global Public Investment.

Nikolai Hegertun is a senior advisor at the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad). Hegertun recently left his position as a Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oslo to join the newly established project ‘2030: Rethinking Development’ at Norad. The project’s aim is to strengthen Norad’s analytical knowledge base while at the same time looking ahead towards the next steps in development cooperation.

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Hegertun has worked on several issues within development – from religious actors in development, agenda setting, to state fragility and the SDGs. He started his career at the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights where he worked on issues such as democracy assistance, religion and development, in addition to youth dialogue in conflict affected areas. In 2014 he started working for the liberal Norwegian think tank, Civita. While there, he headed Civita’s project on aid and innovation. The project was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and raised issues such as poverty, migration, global health and food security on the Norwegian development agenda.

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Nikolai’s academic work has centered on the changing nature of development cooperation and how the political agenda of present-day development is shaped.

Gail Hurley is an independent researcher and advisor on development finance, including to the UN, Foundations and NGOs. She spent 10 years with the United Nations Development Programme in New York as a Policy Specialist on Development Finance and 5 years with EURODAD in Brussels as a Policy Officer on debt. She has authored and co-authored many articles and publications on various aspects of development finance and has a particular interest in how international public finance can be re-shaped in the future to better support international public policy priorities like development, security, environmental protection and innovation.

Rosemary Mburu, has been a champion for healthy communities for over fifteen years and currently serves as the Executive Director for WACI Health. Mburu is a civil society leader in Africa and has extensively worked on strengthening civil society and community advocacy and campaigning in Africa. Her work contributes to creating political will towards improved health outcomes for all in Africa.

Mburu has served in various capacities within the global health architecture including on the UHC2030 Steering Committee, UNITAID Communities Advisory Group and GAVI CSO Steering Committee; Lancet Commission on a synergistic approach to universal health coverage, health security, and health promotion; WHO Advisory Group for SDG3 Global Action Plan R&D, Innovation and Access. She is a member of the African Union Commission Technical Working Group on the ALM-Investing in Health.

Ms Mburu has co-authored several peer-reviewed articles including: Global Health in the Age of COVID-19: responsive health systems through a right to health fund (Health and Human Rights Journal); Clinical trial ethics (International Journal of Clinical Practice); Investments in HIV Prevention Research (African Journal of Reproductive Health); Biomedical HIV Prevention (BMC Proceedings); and Strengthening Primary Healthcare (Lancet Global Health blog).

Ms. Mburu Holds a Masters in Public Health (Ohio University); Masters in Business Administration (Frostburg State University, Maryland); and a Bachelor of Education (Kenyatta University, Kenya).

Mario Pezzini is Director of the OECD Development Centre and Special Advisor to the OECD Secretary-General on Development. In his current position, he also served for a year as Acting Director of the OECD Development Co-operation Directorate.

The OECD Development Centre is an institution where governments, enterprises and civil society organisations informally discuss questions of common interest. Its Governing Board includes most of the OECD countries but also developing and emerging economies as full members. The Centre helps policy makers in OECD and partner countries find innovative solutions to the global challenges of development.

Before joining the Development Centre in 2010, Mario Pezzini held several senior management positions in the OECD, where he has been working since 1995.

Prior to joining the OECD, Mr. Pezzini was Professor in Industrial Economics at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris as well as in US and Italian Universities. Also, Mr. Pezzini served as an Advisor in the field of economic development, industrial organisation and regional economics in international organisations and think tanks (e.g. ILO, UNIDO, European Commission and Nomisma in Italy). Mr. Pezzini started his career in the Government office of the Emilia-Romagna Region.

Simon Reid-Henry is an academic and a key contributor to the conceptual development of Global Public Investment. Simon is a member of the EWG Steering Committee and is Academic Lead for the EWG’s technical papers. He has written widely on international affairs, development, and political economy, including the books The Cuban Cure: Reason and Resistance in Global Science and The Political Origins of Inequality: Why a more equal world is better for us all. Simon is a Fellow of the RSA and a recipient of the Leverhulme Prize. He received his PhD in Economic Geography from the University of Cambridge before moving to Queen Mary University of London where he is presently Professor of Historical and Political Geography and Director of the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences. He has held visiting positions at Columbia University in New York, at Macquarie University in Sydney, at the Norwegian Institute of Foreign Affairs and as Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Simon is also co-convenor of London Inequality Studies. His writing can be found in The Guardian, New Statesman, The Economist, The Times, The Independent on Sunday, and the London Review of Books. He has appeared on radio and television and has presented to government agencies in the UK and abroad. Recently he has contributed to the UK Labour task force on international development and is currently collaborating with the Joep Lange Institute on GPI.

Hannah is the CEO of Development Reimagined, a ground-breaking, African-led international development consultancy, headquartered in Beijing, China. She is a highly respected leader, a former diplomat and economist, with close to 20 years of hands-on policy experience on sustainable development, in the private sector, with the UN and other international and government organizations. Her work has covered both traditional development work as well as sustainable development themes (environment and climate change). She is particularly focused on developing robust, holistic, and long-term innovative solutions to challenging development issues – seeing mutual trade and green investment, not just aid, as the best path to development.

Her motivation for contributing to the expert group is three-fold: 1) to help shape the ideas based on diverse African country needs/perspectives, 2) help ensure the ideas are in line with a “decolonised” and “anti-racist” development sector, and 3) provide links to Chinese stakeholders where she is willing to help discuss and gather views to support the group’s launch.

Senior Advisor, Health Economics, UNAIDS.

Andy Sumner is a Professor of International Development in the Department of International Development. He is also Director of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Global Challenges Strategic Research Network on Global Poverty and Inequality Dynamics.

He has twenty years’ international research experience using both qualitative and quantitative methods and has published extensively, including ten books and fifty journal papers and book chapters. His most recent books are ‘Global Poverty’ (2016, Oxford University Press) and ‘Development and Distribution’ (2018, Oxford University Press).

He was appointed at King’s in 2012 and was a founding Co-Director of the King’s International Development Institute, which later became the Department of International Development. He is a member of the ESRC Peer Review College and has also held various roles in academic networks, including as a Vice President of, and UK representative to, the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) from 2008 to 2014, and as a Council Member of the Development Studies Association, UK and Ireland, from 2000 to 2014.

He holds associate positions at Oxford University; the Center for Global Development, Washington DC; the United Nations University, WIDER, Helsinki; and the Centre for Economics and Development Studies, Padjadjaran University, Indonesia.

Shu-Shu Tekle-Haimanot is Senior Adviser on Political Advocacy and Partnerships, Resource Mobilization at The Global Fund. Shu-Shu is an accomplished expert in public health, public policy, political advocacy and resource mobilization. She has special expertise in high-level diplomacy with Heads of State, Ministers, senior leaders at the United Nations and other international organizations, CEOs in private sector companies and established leaders in academia.

Shu-Shu has more than 20 years of experience in policy, advocacy and resource mobilization work in international organizations, with highly successful track record in the African region.

Shu-Shu is extremely motivated and results-oriented individual, known for a special ability to work effectively behind the scenes to achieve a common goal, securing billions of dollars for public health. She has significant knowledge of public health issues on HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria, health financing and gender mainstreaming. Shu-Shu is multi-lingual, with an extensive global network and cross-cultural experience.

Giovanni Valensisi is Economic Affairs Officer at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), where he contributes to UNCTAD’s flagship reports on Africa and on the Least Developed Countries. A development economist with more than twelve years of international experience in research and policy analysis, prior to his current post Mr. Valensisi worked on trade negotiation issues at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Addis Ababa – Ethiopia), and carried out various other assignments at UNCTAD, UNDP-Syria and several international NGOs in Italy, Guatemala and Ecuador. He holds a MSc in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics from the Toulouse School of Economics, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pavia, where he was also Research Fellow. Mr. Valensisi has published a dozen peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on international trade, sustainable development, industrialization and development finance.

His aspiration, as member of the Expert Working Group on Global Public Investment, is to contribute to the ongoing debate on a notion that could lay the foundations for a more inclusive and sustainable recovery post-COVID-19, while going beyond the traditional donor-recipient dichotomy.

Kristian Weise is Secretary General of Oxfam IBIS, the Danish affiliate of the international NGO, Oxfam.

Before joining Oxfam, he was Director of Cevea, a think tank which specializes in social and economic analyses. The think tank focuses in particular on the challenges of inequality.

He has previously been Chief of Staff for the Danish Social Democrats in the European Parliament and political advisor to former prime minister, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and for the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (LO).

He is an expert on global inequality, social protection policies, international trade and financial regulations and is widely used as an expert on inequality in Danish media as well as public fora.

He holds an MSc. in political sociology from the London School of Economics and a BSc. in economics and philosophy from Copenhagen Business School.

He looks forward to joining the Expert Working Group on Global Public Investment and particularly to advance the question of how public investment in social protection policies can add value to societies and improve social progress.