World Development Report 2018 team Bios

/ Co-Director, World Development Report
Deon Filmeris a Co-Director of the World Development Report 2018. He was previously Lead Economist in the Research Group at the World Bank, and served as Lead Economist in the Human Development department of the Africa Region of the World Bank. He works on issues of human capital and skills, service delivery, and the impact of policies and programs to improve human development outcomes—with research spanning the areas of education, health, social protection, and poverty and inequality. He has published widely in refereed journals, including studies of the impact of demand-side programs on schooling and learning; the roles of poverty, gender, orphanhood, and disability in explaining education inequalities; and the determinants of effective service delivery. He has recently co-authored books onMaking Schools Work: New Evidence from Accountability ReformsandYouth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa, and was a core team member of the World Bank's World Development Reports in 1995Workers in an Integrating Worldand 2004Making Services Work for Poor People.He holds a PhD and MA from Brown University and a BA from Tufts University.
/ Co-Director, World Development Report
Halsey Rogers is Co-Director of the World Development Report 2018. As Lead Economist with the Education Global Practice, he led the World Bank’s global work on teacher policy, represented the Bank in negotiations on the SDG education agenda, and co-authored the Education Strategy 2020: Learning for All. Rogers has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and advised governments around the world on teacher effectiveness, service delivery, aid and development effectiveness, and other topics such as private tutoring and out-of-school youth. He also co-authored Growth and Empowerment: Making Development Happen (Oxford). Rogers has also served as an advisor to former World Bank chief economists Joseph Stiglitz and Nicholas Stern and as Senior Economist in the Research department. Prior to joining the Bank, he served with the Council of Economic Advisors at the White House, UC Berkeley, the Indonesian Ministry of Finance in Jakarta, and the Korea Development Institute in Seoul. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley.
/ Senior Economist, World Development Report
Samer Al-Samarrai is a Senior Economist in the Education Global Practice at the World Bank. Since joining the Bank in 2011, Samer has coordinated the World Bank’s education engagement in Indonesia and the Philippines. He has recently co-authored a number of reports including Assessing Basic Education Service Delivery in the Philippines and Teacher Reform in Indonesia: The Role of Politics and Evidence in Policy Making. Prior to the World Bank, he was a senior policy analyst in UNESCO’s Global Monitoring Report team where he was responsible for developing key themes and coordinating research on the challenges countries faced in achieving the Education For All goals. Between 2001 and 2008, Samer was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. During that time, he worked on a financial management reform program in Bangladesh and undertook research and advisory work on education finance, labor market outcomes and gender and education in Sub-Saharan Africa. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Sussex and a BSc and MSc from the London School of Economics.
/ Senior Economist, World Development Report
David Evans is a Senior Economist on the team for the 2018 World Development Report. His research focuses on the economics of education, health, and social safety nets, particularly in Africa and Latin America. In the past, he coordinated impact evaluations in the Chief Economist's Office for the Africa Region of the World Bank (2012-2016) and worked on education research and operations in the Human Development Department in the Latin America and the Caribbean Region of the World Bank (2009-2012). He has designed and implemented impact evaluations in agriculture, early child development, education, governance, health, and social protection, in Brazil, the Gambia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania. He coordinated the World Bank’s efforts to estimate the economic impact of the West African Ebola epidemic of 2014-2015. He has published in Demography, Economic Development and Cultural Change, the Lancet, the Lancet Global Health, the World Bank Research Observer, and World Development. He teaches economic development at the Pardee RAND Graduate School of Public Policy, and he holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He writes, mostly on education issues, for the Development Impact blog.
/ Senior Economist & Chapter Author, World Development Report
Shwetlena Sabarwal is a Senior Economist at the Education Global Practice of the World Bank. Her main research interests are in the areas of Economics of Education and Labor Markets. In education, she is working on teacher and student effort, performance-based financing, education markets, and the political economy of education reform. In Labor Markets she her work has focused on entrepreneurship, public works, and the role of kinship networks.She received her PhD in Applied Economics from University of Minnesota in 2008.

/ Lead Education Specialist& Chapter Author, World Development Report
Alexandria Valerio is a Lead Education Specialist on the 2018 World development Report team. She has over 20 years of experience leading and managing large-scale research projects and senior-level client relationships in education and training. This includes leading several of the Bank’s flagship global engagement programs, including the STEP Skills Measurement Program and SABER Workforce Development. In the past, Alexandria was responsible for the Bank’s education policy dialogue and lending portfolios in the Latin America and the Caribbean region (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Panama), as well as in Angola and Mozambique. Her published work includes peer‐reviewed papers and reports on the measurement and impacts of skills mismatch; the role of cognitive, socioemotional and job-relevant skills on labor market outcomes; the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education and training programs; the cost and financing of early childhood education; the impact of school fees; and the role of school health programs to prevent HIV/AIDS in school-age populations. She is currently a Global Lead for the Skills Global Solutions Group, a core member of the global inter-agency group on Technical Vocational Education and Training/Skills, and a member of the technical working group on Human Resource Development for the G20. Alexandria holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Education and Economics of Education from Columbia University and a master’s degree in Public Administration in Economic Development Policy from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.
Senior Program Officer, Development Policy Unit, World Bank
Märt Kivine, senior program officer, is handling partner relations, outreach activities and production of the World Development Report. Previously worked at the World Bank Board, as an Advisor and Senior Advisor to the Executive Director (2010-2014). Before joining the Bank, made a career in national civil service in Estonia, serving as a Counsellor at the Ministry of Finance (2006–2010), advisor to the President of Estonia (2007-2010) and political Advisor of the Foreign Ministry (1999–2001). He also worked as Director and Deputy Director of Governments European Integration Office (2001-2003), Director of the Performance Audit Unit in the State Audit Institution (2004-2005). Before that, he worked as a reporter, editor and columnist for two major Estonian newspaper (1992–1999).