Speakers

Abha leads British Asian Trust’s Social Finance work across South Asia. She is also a founding member of The British Asian Trust and has contributed to its growth and leadership over the last 15 years. Abha was a Fellow of Practice in 2021 and 2022 at the Government Outcomes Labs, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. Before coming to the Trust, Abha was the Chief Operating Officer of the UK India Business Council after five years in the Reinsurance markets in London.

She grew up in Mumbai, India and graduated with a BA in Political Science from the University of Mumbai and a BA Hons in Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge University. She is currently serving on the Board of Trustees at the London Stock Exchange Foundation and the UK Board of Transform Schools, a non profit focussed on secondary education in India.

Clare J FitzGerald joined King's Business School in 2021 as a Lecturer in Management & Organisation after spending four years as a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, Blavatnik School of Government. Her research interests are clustered around understanding how public-serving organisations can independently and collectively deliver public value, and in how law, rules, regulations, and administrative practices can enable them to do that.

While at Oxford, Clare co-led three externally-funded research and evaluation programmes: the primary evaluation of the UK Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport Life Chances Fund; the formative evaluation of the Home Office Trusted Relationships Fund (in partnership with the Behavioural Insights Team); and the ongoing UKRI-funded 'Optimising Outcomes from Procurement and Partnering for COVID-19 and Beyond.'

Prior to her fellowship at Oxford, Clare completed her PhD. and Master’s in Public Administration from North Carolina State University. Clare also spent two years in the technology industry, a highlight of which was winning a 2017 Innovations in American Government Award Bright Ideas from the Harvard Kennedy School Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation for the mobile application iThrive.

Clare’s research has been published and presented in a range of journals and conferences including the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Public Money & Management, the Journal of Public and Nonprofit Affairs, Disasters, the Public Management Research Conference, the Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management, the International Research Society for Public Management, and the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action.

Clare is currently working on a book exploring public service contracting with Cambridge University Press.

Dr. Gustafsson-Wright is a Senior Fellow in the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution. Her current focus on effective delivery of social services including education and health interventions in developing countries has consolidated her role as a global expert on innovative financing mechanisms including payment by results, public-private partnerships and impact investing.

She is the premier thought-leader and convener in the field of social and development impact bonds and has written over a dozen publications on this cutting-edge topic including a recent series of policy briefs, which examine the success of impact bonds over the past ten years. With over 20 years of experience in development, her career has primarily focused on applied microeconomic research in human development with regional foci in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean including conducting numerous impact evaluations. 

Her previous professional experience includes working at the World Bank, the UNICEF Innocenti Research Center, and as Senior Researcher with the Amsterdam Institute for International Development (AIID). Dr. Gustafsson-Wright holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Tinbergen Institute at the University of Amsterdam, as well as Masters of Science in Applied Economics and Finance and Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz. She is regularly cited in the media including in the Economist, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, and has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals as well as contributed to several books in her field.

Jalil is the Executive Director of F4J Consulting Services, managing the implementation of F4J Palestine Employment DIB. Prior to that, Jalil worked with DAI and Social Finance as Senior Advisor for DIB design, commissioned by World Bank. Jalil has worked on the DIB since 2017.
Until 2016, Jalil was the MENA Regional Technical Specialist at ‘International Youth Foundation’ supporting organizations in MENA design and implement Educational, Employability and Entrepreneurship programs.
Jalil was also a management and marketing instructor at Bethlehem University. Jalil has an MBA degree from Lewis University, Illinois, and a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Bethlehem University.

Jessica is an Operations Officer with the Global Partnership for Results-Based Approaches (GPRBA), a trust-fund administered by the World Bank. Her commitment to international development led her to the World Bank in 2011, where she specializes in innovative financing models to support access to basic services for poor households. She has worked on projects in water and sanitation, health, and education sectors, with a focus on results-based and blended finance approaches. She previously worked with the United Nations as a Researcher on climate change and economic development, and holds a Master’s degree in Development Economics from American University.

Maitreyi Bordia Das is Practice Manager in the Urban, Resilience and Land Global Practice of the World Bank. She oversees several global programs, including the Global Partnership for Results Based Approaches (formerly, GBOPA) and the Tokyo Development Learning Center. Previously, she was the Bank’s first Global Lead on Social Inclusion.

Based in Washington DC, Dr. Das leads a talented group of professionals who work on urban development, resilience and inclusion. She has long-standing research and policy experience in human development and infrastructure related sectors. Of these, urban development, water and sanitation, demography, health, social protection and social development, stand out.

Having started her career as a lecturer in St Stephen's College, University of Delhi, Dr. Das has also been a MacArthur Fellow at the Harvard Center of Population and Development Studies and an advisor to the United Nations Development Program. She has a PhD in Sociology (Demography) from the University of Maryland.

Before joining the World Bank, Dr. Das was in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).

Max Bode is a researcher at the World Bank and an Adjunct Professor for Results-Based Financing (RBF) at Georgetown University. At the World Bank, his research focuses on evaluating and improving the Program-for-Results which to date has committed $40 billion in RBF funding. Prior to joining the bank, Max was a Partner at Instiglio, a consulting firm specializing in RBF, worked as a civil servant in Zanzibar's Ministry of Health, and a researcher at Harvard's Center for International Development. He has policy and research experience across a variety of social sectors including global health, education, financial inclusion, and poverty alleviation. Max holds an MPA/ID from Harvard's Kennedy School and an economics master's from the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics.

Richard is Chief Executive of the Healthy Brains Global Initiative (HBGI). The mission of HBGI is to address the huge global gap in the understanding of, and services targeting, poor mental health (and its causes and consequences). They pool philanthropy to contract and pay for outcomes on mental health programs and also provide technical assistance to governments and other commissioners in outcomes contract/service design and performance management. They look to embed the voice of people with lived experience at every step.

Richard has been the Chair of ten Social Impact Bonds, including homelessness prevention, care for carers, refugee integration and supporting children at risk of failure at school. He is the Chair of a Development Impact Bond for unemployed Palestinian youth, with outcomes funded by the World Bank, and will be chairing a new youth Social Impact Bond in South Africa.

Between 2000 and 2012, Richard set up and ran three for-profit organisations delivering services with outcomes contracts, mainly contracted by the UK government and mostly targeting very long-term unemployment. Over that time his programs assisted around 1 million people.

From 2012 to his start at HBGI in 2022, he worked as a Senior Consultant with the World Bank across multiple countries. His biggest projects were shifting basic and essential health services in Afghanistan to new performance-based contracts and an outcomes-focused program in Ethiopia to connect refugees with jobs. He was also a Senior Advisor for the Global Fund.

Richard had an early career in international education. He studied Philosophy and Psychology at Oxford, and Applied Linguistics at Exeter.