Board

Julian is an entrepreneur and has been the Member of Parliament for Skipton and Ripon, North Yorkshire since 2010. He is a qualified mediator.
Most recently he was an informal advisor to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at Number Ten Downing Street focused on Northern Ireland, industrial relations, and parliamentary management.

He began his ministerial career as a ministerial aide in the Department for International Development from 2010-2015. From 2017-2019, he was Government Chief Whip during the Brexit period and led efforts to resolve the parliamentary impasse in Government and across parties in parliament.

In July 2019, Julian was appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. On behalf of the UK Government, he led the negotiations that culminated in the “New Decade, New Approach” which restored devolved Government to Northern Ireland. He was awarded Spectator magazine’s Minister of the Year in 2020 following the deal.

Julian was appointed CBE by Theresa May and Knight Commander of the Order of Bath in Prime Minister Sunak’s dissolution honour’s list for political and public service.

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Patricia Peña leads a multi-faceted team at Global Affairs Canada responsible for the delivery of Canada’s international assistance, and increasing impact, innovation and engagement with a wide range of partners, including in the areas of development finance, and social and economic development. She has a rich and long-standing history working with Canadian, multilateral, civil society, private sector, philanthropic and diplomatic partners globally.

Emiliana Vegas is a Professor of Practice and Faculty Chair of the Education Policy and Analysis program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), where she is also the Director of the Education Lab for Latin America. She sits on the board of the Jacobs Foundation. Her research and practice focus on improving educational opportunities in developing countries. She holds a Doctor of Education from HGSE, a Master’s in Public Policy from Duke University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Communications from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in Caracas, Venezuela.

Before returning to HGSE, Vegas was Co-Director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. Between 2012 and 2019, she served as Chief of the Education Division at the Inter-American Development Bank, where she oversaw the Bank’s lending operations and technical assistance projects across Latin America and the Caribbean. Prior to joining the IDB, she worked for more than ten years at the World Bank, where she led research and operations focused on education systems in several low- and middle-income countries.

She has written extensively on issues affecting education systems in Latin America and the Caribbean and other developing regions. Her articles and books cover topics such as policies to leverage technology to accelerate learning and skills development, increasing teacher effectiveness, school finance policies, and early childhood development policies. Her latest book, Let’s Change the World: How to Work Within International Development Organizations to Make a Difference, was published by Rowman & Littlefield (now Bloomsbury) in September 2024.

Jörg Frieden has been the Board Chair of the Swiss Investment Fund for Emerging Markets (SIFEM) since 2018.

From 1986 to 2018, Jörg held a broad range of posts and responsibilities at the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.a. He worked as coordinator in Mozambique, advisor for the World Bank in Washington, and as Head of the Eastern and Southern Africa Section in Bern.

Between 1999 and 2003, his professional career took a sidestep to the Federal Office for Refugees where he held the position of Deputy Director. In 2003, he returned to the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) as Resident Director of Development Programmes in Nepal. From 2008 to 2010, he was Deputy Director of the SDC and headed the Global Cooperation Department. He was also an advisor to and representative of Federal Councillor Micheline Calmy-Rey in the UN Commission on Sustainable Development.

From 2011 to 2016, Jörg was Executive Director of Switzerland at the World Bank Group, specifically at the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and then Swiss Ambassador to Nepal until 2018. Jörg is also a board member of Helvetas, a development cooperation NGO in Zurich, and member of the development commission of the Canton of Fribourg.

Lakshmi Shyam-Sunder is the former Vice President and World Bank Group Chief Risk Officer (2014-2024). Lakshmi was previously Chief Financial Officer at the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and Director of Risk and Financial Policy at the International Finance Corporation both also part of the World Bank Group.

She has led transformative initiatives at large and small organizations in both the private and public sectors supporting growth and innovation while also ensuring financial sustainability and operational resilience. Lakshmi has consulted for a range of public and private sector institutions in the U.S. and in emerging markets. She has also served on the Board and Finance and Risk Committees of financial institutions.

She is co-founder of the Global Emerging Markets (GEMs) risk database, a Consortium for Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) and International Financial Institutions (IFIs).

Lakshmi was a faculty member at the MIT Sloan School of Management and earlier, at The Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College. She has a Ph.D. in Finance from the MIT Sloan School of Management, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and a BA (Honors) in Economics and Statistics from the University of Bombay.

Karen Mundy is a Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Professor Mundy’s award-winning research is focused on the politics of international cooperation in education, the work of international organizations and transnational actors in education, and on educational reform and educational leadership in the global south. She has served as President of the Comparative Education Society (2014-2015) and as Chief Technical Officer of the Global Partnership for Education (2014-2018). She is a member of the UNESCO International Commission on the Futures of Education, and co-author of the commission’s report “Re-imagining our futures together: Towards a new social contract for education”. Her early career was spent as a teacher, researcher and consultant in East and Southern Africa.