Course Experts
Francis Andrianarison
Francis is a senior economist with the United Nations Development Program in Cameroon and the Congo. He has more than twenty years of experience in strategic advisory to African governments, the private sector and other international organizations such as the World Bank, the EU, the FAO, the WWF. His area of expertise covers strategic planning, development finance, structural transformation, inequality, poverty and growth. He holds a degree in mathematics from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Madagascar, an Economic Statistician engineering degree from CESD-ENSAE Paris, a degree in international economics and finance from Paris-IX Dauphine and a PhD in economics from the University of Laval-Canada.
Katie Bernhard
Katie Bernhard is a geographic data scientist and statistician with six years of experience in East and North Africa. As Data Analytics Specialist at UNDP Uganda, she develops poverty, vulnerability, and inequality statistics and analyzes cross-cutting environmental and humanitarian issues for strategic social policy and program advisory. Katie led the computation of the first Multidimensional Poverty Index for Refugees in Uganda and the first Sub-national Human Development Index in both Uganda and Rwanda, also with GIS applications. She also worked with UNDP Regional Bureau for Africa to compute a Sub-regional Human Security Index for the Horn of Africa.
Agustín Casarini
Agustín is an Argentinian economist. He has contributed to the computation of the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) since 2017 and has collaborated with other OPHI projects such as Changes over Time. Previously, he has worked in different government agencies at national and local levels in Argentina, and as a university professor of statistics and economics. Now he is also working as a Research Assistant in the field of health economics, investigating tobacco control policies in Latin America, as well as inequalities and social determinants of health.
Elena Danilova-Cross
Elena is a Programme Specialist on Poverty and Inequality at UNDP Istanbul Regional Hub. She has over 10 years of professional experience in integrating human and sustainable development into policy practice as well as statistical, mainstreaming, acceleration and policy support for Agenda 2030 and SDGs. Elena initiates and manages studies, research and publications on social inclusion, human development, multidimensional poverty and inequality, including coordination and quality assurance and evaluation of human development reporting, policy papers and other cross-thematic reports.
Bécaye Diarra
Bécaye is an Economic Advisor at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Côte d’Ivoire. He served in this same role in the Central African Republic (CAR) from 2009 to 2012 and in Mali from 2013 to 2019. Becaye holds a Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) from Jean Moulin University of Lyon III (France) and a Master’s Degree in Economics from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium). He began his career as a Researcher at the Department of the University of Brussels in Applied Economics (DULBEA) from 1998 to 1999, then as Marketing Manager at the Senegalese National Company Lottery from 2000 to 2002. From 2003 to 2008, he was the Director of Business Development at the Agency for the Development of Small and Medium Enterprises, thus dealing with the financing and upgrading of businesses.
Idrissa Diagne
Idrissa is a macroeconomist with basic training in mathematics, statistics and development economics. He is the Economic Advisor of UNDP in Gabon, a position also held in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Benin, Togo, Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire. He also served as Inter-Regional Advisor at UN/DESA in New York and as Senior Technical Advisor in Niger on behalf of UN/DTCD. He is an Economic Statistician Engineer (CESD) of the National School of Statistics and Economic Administration (ENSAE).
Jakob Dirksen
Jakob is part of OPHI's research and outreach teams and the research assistant to OPHI director, Sabina Alkire. He is also lecturer and Research Associate at Leuphana University of Lüneburg. Previously, Jakob held research positions at the Blavatnik School of Government and Mansfield College and worked in diplomacy at the German Foreign Office. His research interests lie in theory and measurement of well-being, poverty and inequalities, sustainable development, and the capability approach.
Rolando Gonzales
Rolando is a consultant for the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), Oxford University. He is working as a postdoc data scientist at HZDR in Germany. He is receiving his PhD(c) at the University of Agder in Norway, and is also working as a Deputy Manager in the Risk Division of BCP Bank called CrediCorp. Previously, he was a consultant for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP). His research interests include socio-economic development, artificial intelligence, machine-learning, Bayesian methods, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) and epistemology.
Ricardo Isea Silva
Ricardo is a development economist with over ten years of professional work experience in international organizations and research centers. Over the last few years, he has worked at UNDP’s Development Policy Bureau, providing technical advice on sustainable development issues and facilitating the Community of Practice (CoP) on Poverty and Inequality. Ricardo is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the New School for Social Research (NY), where he has also worked as a lecturer in Critical Thinking.
Nathalie Milbach-Bouché
Nathalie is the UNDP Senior Strategic Advisor of Arab States at the Regional Hub in Amman. She is a development economist with over 20 years of professional experience in academia, the private sector, the UN and other development partners in more than 40 countries. Before her current role, she served successively as UNDP Inclusive Growth Team Leader for Arab States, UNDP Poverty Practice leader in Arab States and West and Central Africa. She has also served as a UNDP macroeconomic policy specialist for transition economies in Asia-Pacific and has worked as a senior economist for the FAO in Bangladesh, where she supported the National Food Policy Plan of Action and supervised research on food security. Before this, she led an EU-TACIS capacity development project in economic analysis, following five years of service as a teacher/researcher at the University of Auvergne, where she holds a PhD in Development Economics and a Master in project analysis.
Christian Oldiges
Christian currently serves as a Policy Specialist, Inclusive Growth at UNDP, New York. He has over 10 years of experience in development economics, policy advocacy and social protection. Previously, as Director of Policy Research at OPHI, he led on projects in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa to support governments and national bureaus of statistics in developing national multidimensional poverty indices together with UN agencies. In his postdoctoral research at Oxford, Christian wrote extensively on multidimensional poverty and its interlinkages with COVID-19, migration, and conflict, as well as on workfare programmes and food security. Currently, his paper with Sabina Alkire and Usha Kanagaratnam on India’s success in moving more than 270 million people out of multidimensional poverty is being published in World Development.
Renata Pardo
Renata is an economist from Universidad de Los Andes with a master’s degree in Economics from Catholic University of Louvain. Currently working as Inclusive Growth Specialist for the Inclusive Growth and SDG Integrator Cluster of UNDP Panama Regional Hub. She has worked as consultant for different government agencies in Colombia, directly participated in the design of Colombia’s MPI, and was director of the Colombian Longitudinal Survey of Universidad de los Andes – ELCA. More recently, she developed a methodology for micro-simulating the effect of Covid-19 on multidimensional poverty in El Salvador and Ecuador.
Gonzalo Pizarro
Gonzalo joined the UN in October 2005 and currently serves as the Regional Adviser on SDG Integration for Arab States. His previous position was Regional Policy Adviser on SDGs and Human Development for Latin America and the Caribbean, where he led the design and delivery of UNDP’s offer on Inclusive Growth and SDGs, including support on design and use of MPIs at country level and in Middle Income Countries (MICs). He holds a Ph.D. in Water Resources Management from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Columbia University in New York.
Renata Rubian
Renata is a Policy Advisor for Inclusive Sustainable Growth at UNDP. She has over 18 years of experience working with international development for the United Nations, IUCN, and the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Her work focuses on multidimensional poverty and inequality in urban areas, supporting development planning at national and local levels. She leads on policy support to countries for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development using practical tools for SDG implementation.
Isiyaka Sabo
Isiyaka served as UNDP’s Senior Economic Advisor in Madagascar, Comoros, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and in Senegal where he is currently. Before joining UNDP, He was Economist at IMF CO in Niger, Macroeconomist at the West African Development Bank and Director of Economic Reforms and Financial Studies at Niger’s Ministry of Economy and Finance. He holds Diplomas of Engineer in Statistics and Master of Advanced Studies in Economic Policy Management from CERDI of the University of Auvergne Clermont-Ferrand France. He is certified in Economic Development Policies from the Institute of Economic Research and the Economic Planning Agency of Japan.
Rita Sciarra
Rita is an expert in international development and serves as Team Lead for inclusive Growth and Poverty Reduction for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Hub in Panama. She previously served as Strategic Advisor with the UNDP in Mexico supporting the country during its economic recovery process after the earthquake in 2018. Originally from Italy, she is fluent in four languages, with more than 14 years of experience in three different continents, in post-conflict and normal development conditions.
Momina Sohail
Momina works at UNDP as a Communications Officer for the Development Policy Unit, working on the Pakistan National Human Development Report as well as the SDGs Programme. She is a Commonwealth Scholar with a Master’s in Medical Anthropology from the University of Durham, UK. Momina is interested in ethnographically-grounded research, and the impact of opportunity and sensemaking on life outcomes.
Bishwa Nath Tiwari
Bishwa writes UNDP’s flagship reports. He leads the work on human development report, SDGs, multidimensional poverty and social protection in UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub, and offers technical and advisory services to UNDP Country Offices in Asia and the Pacific region. Prior to joining Bangkok Regional Hub, he worked at UNDP Nepal and Bangladesh. He started his career as a teacher in Tribhuvan University, Nepal. Bishwa holds a PhD in Economics from University of Rajasthan, India, a Master in Environmental and Resource Economics from University of London, and a Master in Economics from Tribhuvan University, Nepal.
Mansour Ndiaye
Mansour is the head of the Inclusive Growth Team and has over 24 years of experience in economic and social policy making in Africa and beyond as a development economist. Mansour joined UNDP in 2010 as Economic Advisor in Niger. Prior to joining UNDP, Mansour served as an economist at the IMF and has held several management positions with BCEAO. He holds an MSc in Macroeconometric Modeling from the Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l’Administration Economique (ENSAE, ParisTech) and an MSc in Development Economics from the Université d’Auvergne.
Juliana Yael Milovich
Juliana is a researcher within the outreach team of OPHI, supporting governments in their development of national multidimensional poverty indices. She is also part of the Global MPI team, co-leading the work on non-DHS and non-MICS datasets in the Global MPI 2018, 2020 and 2021. She is also lecturer at the Institute of High Studies of Latin America (IHEAL), a multidisciplinary research centre located at the University Sorbonne Nouvelle (France). She holds a PhD in Economics from the University Paris Nanterre. Her current research focuses on the determinants of poverty and well-being and, more precisely, on the (overlapping) deprivations experienced by children in Guatemala.
Start date: 22 February 2021
Languages: English, French, Spanish
Course type: Massive Open Online Course
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