Independent Expert Group

Vera Songwe is a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution. She was formerly Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and an Under-Secretary-General at the United Nations. She is Chair of the Board of the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility and a Co-Chair of the Food System Economics Commission. 

Vera Songwe previously served as Regional Director covering West and Central Africa at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and Country Director for Senegal, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Guinea Bissau and Mauritania at the World Bank. Before this she was a Lead Economist at the World Bank and Advisor to the Managing Director. She formerly worked in the East Asia and Pacific Region’s Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Unit, as Country Sector Coordinator and Senior Economist for the Philippines, and in Mongolia, Cambodia and Morocco managing different World Bank programmes. She is a member of the African Leadership Network.

Moritz Kraemer is Chief Economist and Head of Research at LBBW Bank, and a Senior Fellow at SOAS University of London’s Center for Sustainable Finance. Until 2018 he was the Sovereign Ratings Group’ Global Chief Ratings Officer at S&P Global (formerly Standard and Poor’s), overseeing the analytical work assessing the creditworthiness of over 130 national governments worldwide.

Before joining LBBW, Moritz Kraemer was Chief Economist of CountryRisk.io. He also served as the Chair of Economic Advisory Panel at R.J. Fleming & Co. and as an independent non-executive director of Scope Ratings, the largest Europe-headquartered Credit Rating Agency. He began his professional career in 1996 as an economist at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C. and in Honduras. He teaches at Goethe-University Frankfurt’s House of Finance and the Centre Internationale de Formation Européene (CIFE) in Nice.

Masood Ahmed is the President Emeritus of the Center for Global Development. In a 35-year career in economic development policy initiatives relating to debt, aid effectiveness, trade, and global economic prospects, he has been, among other positions, Director of the IMF's Middle East and Central Asia Department, its Director of External Relations and the World Bank's Vice President for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management. From 2003-2006 he was Director General, Policy and International at the UK government's Department for International Development (DFID). 

Masood Ahmed has served on a number of international committees and forums and is currently the Policy Advisor to the G20 High Level Independent Expert Group on Strengthening Multilateral Development Banks and co-chair of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on the Future of Growth. In 2023 he received a knighthood from the UK government for his services to international development.

Simon Cueva is a former Minister of Economy and Finance of Ecuador and is now the Rector of Universidad Internacional del Ecuador. He previously served as the Senior Economist and Representative in Bolivia at the IMF and as Chief Economist at the Central Bank of Ecuador. He has been a consultant on economic and financial issues to the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, USAID and a wide range of other national and international institutions.

Simon Cueva has taught for over 20 years in French and Ecuadorian universities and held several senior academic management positions at universities in Latin America. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Finance for Development Lab at the Paris School of Economics.

Juan-Camilo Cardenas is Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Universidad de Los Andes (Colombia). His research focuses on the analysis and design of institutions and rules that promote sustainable, efficient and fair use of common resources and provision of local public goods, using tools from behavioural and experimental economics to understand human cooperation within groups. His research has been widely published in journals of development, environmental and behavioural economics. He is the Director of the SDG Center for Latin America and the Caribbean CODS, is a member of the Earth Commission and also serves at Board of the World Wildlife Fund Colombia. 

Kevin Gallagher is a Professor of Global Development Policy at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and the Director of the Boston University Global Development Policy Center. He serves as the Lead Expert on Multilateral Development Bank Reform to the Brazilian Presidency of the G20; is a member of the Task Force on Climate, Development and the International Monetary Fund; and is Co-Chair of the Debt Relief for a Green and Inclusive Recovery Project.

Kevin Gallagher has previously served as co-chair on the T20 India Task Force on ‘Refuelling Growth: Clean Energy and Green Transition’ to the Indian Presidency of the G20, on the Chair’s Council of the United States Export Import Bank on China Competition and as the International Chair of the ‘Greening the BRI Task Force’ for the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED). He is the author or co-author of seven books in the areas of economic development, trade and investment policy, international environmental policy, Latin America and China.

Sandrine Gaudin is Vice-Governor (Financial Strategy) of the Council of Europe Development Bank. She was formerly Secretary General for European Affairs and Europe Advisor to the Prime Minister of France (2017 -2022). 

Sandrine Gaudin’s career has spanned the French Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Economy and Finance, where she was Head of the Bilateral Affairs and Business Internationalisation Department from 2014 to 2017. She was previously Head of the Regional Economic Department at the French Embassy in London, Head of the European Coordination and Strategy Office, and representative for France to the Board of Directors of the European Investment Bank and the Administrative Council of the CEB. 

Frannie Leautier is Partner and CEO of SouthBridge Investment, and leads its investment activities. She was formerly Chief of Staff to the President and Vice President at the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President at the African Development Bank.  She previously held various roles at The Trade and Development Bank (TDB) Group, including Vice Chair of the Board and Special Advisor to the President before becoming TDB’s first Chief Operating Officer.

Frannie Leautier has extensive governance experience serving on the Boards of Momentum Group, FSDA/I, Orca Energy, Onafriq, Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), and CFAO.  She has held advisory and governance roles on the boards of the UN Foundation, AZA Finance, and African Risk Capacity Ltd. Other advisory and board roles include MIT, the African Economic Research Consortium, Institute for Security Studies, King Badouin Foundation US, ODI, and the Nelson Mandela Institute for Science and Technology. She has guest lectured at Sciences Po, MIT, Harvard, and University of Tokyo.

Ma Jun is the Founder and President of the Beijing-based Institute of Finance and Sustainability. He was formerly Chief Economist at the People’s Bank of China’s Research Bureau and a member of the PBOC Monetary Policy Committee. Before joining the PBOC he worked for 13 years at Deutsche Bank, where he was Managing Director, Chief Economist and Investment Strategist for Greater China. From 1992-2000 he worked as a senior economist at the World Bank and the IMF. 

Ma Jun serves as Chairman of the Green Finance Committee of the China Society for Finance and Banking, Co-Chair of the Steering Committee of the Green Investment Principles for the Belt and Road, Co-Chair of the G20 Sustainable Finance Working Group, and Co-Chair of the International Platform on Sustainable Finance Taxonomy Working Group. He is the author of several publications on green finance.

Isabelle Mateos y Lago is a Managing Director and Global Head of BlackRock's Official Institutions Group and Chief Markets Strategist for its Financial and Strategic investors Group. She serves on the firm's Global Operations Committee and Geopolitical Risk Committee. 

Isabelle Mateos y Lago previously held several positions within BlackRock including senior advisor to Vice Chairman Philipp Hildebrand and Chief Multi-Asset Strategist in the BlackRock Investment Institute. Prior to joining BlackRock she spent 15 years at the IMF, working in economic analysis, policy making, strategy and global governance, including as G20 liaison and as a Member of the Executive Board. She is a member of the Board of the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel and regularly contributes her views on financial markets and geopolitics in a variety of global media.

Wanjira Mathai is Managing Director for Africa and Global Partnerships at the World Resources Institute (WRI) and Africa adviser to the Bezos Earth Fund (BEF). She was formerly chair of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya founded by her mother, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai, which has pioneered investment in women entrepreneurs in renewable energy, and is driving a movement to restore 100 million hectares of African land. Her work seeks to raise the prominence and visibility of climate change, youth leadership, sustainable energy and landscape restoration.

Wanjira Mathai currently serves as Chair of the Wangari Maathai Foundation and is a Leadership Council member of the Clean Cooking Alliance. She is a member of the High-Level Group of the Africa-Europe Foundation and the European Climate Foundation Advisory Council. She was named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential African Women in 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2023.

Irene Monasterolo is Professor of Climate Finance at Utrecht University’s School of Economics, a Non-Resident Fellow at the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, a visiting professor at WU Wien and a CEPR research fellow. She is also co-founder and senior partner at Climate Finance Alpha. 

Irene Monasterolo’s research analyses the role of finance in climate change mitigation and adaptation, and the conditions for finance to enable or hinder the low-carbon transition. She co-developed the climate stress test of the financial system, which introduced the first framework to translate climate scenarios into adjustment in financial valuation and risk metrics. She also co-developed the EIRIN macrofinancial model to analyse the impacts of climate risks and climate policies in the low-carbon transition. Irene's work has been applied in collaboration with central banks, financial regulators, development finance institutions, the European Commission and the Network for Greening the Financial System (short term scenarios). Irene’s work has been published in leading journals including Science and Nature Climate Change.

Avinash Persaud is Special Advisor on Climate Change to the President of the Inter-American Development Bank. Prior to this he was Special Climate Envoy to the Prime Minister of Barbados. He has over 30 years’ experience in finance, public policy and academia.

Avinash Persaud previously held several senior executive roles at major banks, including J. P. Morgan, State Street and UBS. He served as Chairman of the Caribbean Community's Commission on the Economy and as a Commissioner of the UN Commission on Financial Reform. He is a member of the High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance sponsored by the UNFCCC COP26, 27 and 28 presidencies. Author of multiple publications on finance and economics, he is an Emeritus Professor of Gresham College in the UK, former Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute and winner of the Jacques de Larosiere Award in Global Finance for his work on financial risk management and systemic crises.

Anthony Requin is General Inspector of Finance at the General Auditing Service of the French Ministry of Economy and Finance. Prior to this he was Chief Executive of the debt management office Agence France Trésor (2015-2021), and Assistant Secretary for Multilateral Affairs and Development in the Treasury Directorate General of the French Ministry of Economy and Finance (2012-2015). 

From 2006 to 2013 Anthony Requin held various positions in the French Ministry of Economy and Finance, including Head of Insurance Products and Markets, Deputy Chief Executive of the Agence France Trésor and Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Corporate Financing and Financial Markets Division of the Financial Sector Department. He also served as Senior Advisor to the French Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund and as Alternate Executive Director for France in the World Bank Group (2002-2005).

Brad Setser is the Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations. His expertise is in global trade and capital flows, financial vulnerability analysis and sovereign debt restructuring. 

Brad Setser was previously Senior Advisor to the United States Trade Representative, where he worked on the resolution of a number of trade disputes. Before this he served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for international economic analysis in the U.S. Treasury, and as a director for international economics on the staff of the National Economic Council and the National Security Council. He has also been a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund. He is the author or co-author of several publications on international finance and trade.

Stacy Swann is the founder of Resilient Earth Capital, and former CEO of Climate Finance Advisors. She has over 25 years’ of experience in climate and blended finance, project finance and sustainability, most recently has been working with impact investors, financial institutions, corporations and policymakers on issues at the nexus of climate change and investment.

Stacy Swann has previously held senior executive positions in the private-sector arm of the World Bank Group, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), as well as with the US Department of Treasury, and other organisations.  She serves on several boards, including the Montgomery County Green Bank, where she is Vice Chair and Chair of the Investment Committee, as well as Winrock International, Convergence Blended Finance, Climate Policy Initiative, and the Green Guarantee Company.

Jeromin Zettelmeyer is the Director of Brussels-based think tank Bruegel. He was formerly Deputy Director of the Strategy and Policy Review Department of the IMF. Prior to this he was a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Director-General for Economic Policy at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, and Director of Research and Deputy Chief Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. 

Jeromin Zettelmeyer is a Research Fellow in the International Macroeconomics Programme of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), and a member of the CEPR’s Research and Policy Network on European economic architecture, which he helped found. He is also a member of the international research network CESIfo. He has published widely on financial crises, sovereign debt, economic growth, transition to market and Europe’s monetary union.