The Governance and Anti-Corruption team leaders of the World Bank Institute is made up of the following individuals.
Team Leadership
Roumeen Islam Manager, WBI Poverty Reduction & Economic Management
Prior to joining WBI, Roumeen Islam was Director of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2002: Building Institutions for Markets, leading a large multidisciplinary team of experts. The WDR is the Bank’s annual flagship publication.
From 1998 to 2000 she was advisor to the Chief Economist and Senior Vice President in the Bank’s Development Economics group where she conducted reviews of country strategies, lending operations, and economic policies and supported initiatives undertaken by the Chief Economist. Between 1996 and 1998 Ms. Islam was senior economist and program team leader for Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. From 1993 to 1996 she served as a country economist for Morocco, and from 1991-1993 she served as a macroeconomist for Algeria and Morocco. Her work has covered a broad set of topics during this time ranging on public expenditure rationalization, fiscal stability, growth strategies, trade and exchange rate issues, sovereign debt rationalization, financial sector reform and private sector development..
Roumeen Islam joined the World Bank in 1990 through the Young Professionals Program. She holds a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University, a Masters in Public Affairs (special field Economics and Public Policy) from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University.
Anwar M. Shah
Anwar Shah (Ph.D. economics) is Lead Economist and Program Leader, Public Sector Governance Program at the World Bank Institute, Washington, DC. He is also a member of the Executive Board of the International Institute of Public Finance, Munich, Germany and a fellow of the Institute for Public Economics, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He is also affiliated as ‘Honorary Professor’ with the Southwest University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, China and Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China.
He has previously served the Ministry of Finance, Government of Canada, Government of Alberta, the US Agency for International Development and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (as a lead author). He has also taught graduate level courses in environmental and resource economics at the University of Ottawa. He has served as the coordinator of the Global Dialogue on Fiscal Federalism conducted by the Forum of Federation in partnership with Governments in Federal Countries over 2005-200
He has also served in late 1980s as the founder/coordinator of two informal advocacy networks the World Bank - the Ad Hoc Group on Greenhouse Gas Emissions and the Ad Hoc Group On Decentralization. He has advised the governments of Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Poland, South Africa, and Turkey on fiscal system reform issues. He has given short duration courses and/or lectures at Harvard, Duke, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, University of Western Ontario, Peking and Wuhan Universities.
He pioneered the work on economic instruments for global climate change, fiscal decentralization and governance indicators at the World Bank. He is the author of several major World Bank evaluation reports including evaluations of the World Bank’s governance and anti-corruption assistance; its policy advice through public expenditure reviews and its lending programs for public expenditure reforms. He has published more than two dozen books in English, Spanish and Chinese languages and numerous articles in leading economic journals on governance, federalism, fiscal reforms and climate change issues. His books include Fiscal Federalism (with Robin Boadway), by the Cambridge University Press, The Practice of Fiscal Federalism: Comparative Perspectives, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press and Fiscal Incentives for Investment and Innovation by the Oxford University Press. He has edited a dozen volumes in the Governance and Accountability Series – a book series on the best selling list of the World Bank Publisher.
Elizabeth Crespo coordiates the prepation, organization follow-up to the different activities of the team. Elizabeth Crespo joined the Bank in 1993. She is from Venezuela.
K. Migara O. De Silva Senior Economist
Migara De Silva joined the Bank in 1995 and has worked in DECVP and OED before joining WBI. He has worked in a number of WBI programs and has built a comprehensive training program on intergovernmental fiscal relations in Russia to train central and regional/local government officials in all of the 7 Regions (Okrugs) in Russia. He is also the task manager in the joint programs on Central Asia and the Caucuses which were launched under Fiscal Decentralization Initiative (FDI) by WBI, UNDP (Bratislava) and the Local Government Initiative (LGI) of the Soros Foundation in Budapest. Prior to becoming a member of the public sector governance team, Migara has worked extensively and later co-managed a work program (called "Brain Trust" Program) funded by the Government of Japan through WBI. In addition, he has worked on public sector reform and has published papers on the impact of resource booms on growth, institutions and economic growth.
He has graduate degrees from the former Soviet Union and Masters and PhD from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Maria González de Asis Senior Public Sector Specialist
Employed by the World Bank since 1997, Maria González de Asis has concentrated on public sector reform. She has managed anti-corruption programs in the field, disseminating emerging best practice in governance and anti-corruption worldwide at the National and Municipal level and most recently, managing the Legal and Judicial Reform Learning Programs and representing the WBI in the area of Judicial Reform. Before joining the World Bank, Ms. González de Asis worked at Transparency International in Washington, Berlin and Peru, and for the Spanish Lawyer Firm “Abogados Asociados” dealing with political anticorruption cases.
Her publications include: International Corruption (Claves 1999), Judicial Reform and Corruption (La Revista 1997), La Burocracia Española (Revista de Derecho 1996), La corrupción Judicial (Gestion y Análisis de Políticas Publicas 2001) and Judicial Reform and Rule of Law (Georgetown 2003).
Maria González de Asis has a Master's degree in Law from the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid, completed her PhD courses in Law, and also holds a Master's degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University.
Marcos Mendiburu Social Development Specialist
Marcos Mendiburu holds a Master’s degree in Public and International Affairs, with a major in Economic and Social Development from GSPIA, University of Pittsburg. He also pursued graduate studies in International Relations in Argentina, at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), where he worked for approximately five years.
Marcos joined the World Bank in 1999, managing and supporting several initiatives on access to information, transparency, and social accountability in different regions of the world such as ECA, LCR and EAP. In implementing the above activities, he forged partnerships with international institutions, local public bodies and NGOs.
On July 1, 2006, he joined the Media, Information & Governance Program of the World Bank Institute. Within the broader framework of promoting good governance, he has focused on promoting access to public information and strengthening the role that media plays in accountability and governance, mainly in Latin America and the Caribbean. Prior to this position, he was a member of WBI’s Social Empowerment and Social Inclusion Program.
Vasumathi L. Rollakanty
Program Assistant
Ms. Vasumathi Rollakanty is an administrative client support staff. She provides full secretarial and administrative support to the public sector government program. Ms. Rollakanty joined WBIPR in September 1999. She has worked on a number of regional workshops including the Asian Development Forum. Prior to joining WBIPR, Ms. Rollakanty worked with the Information Solutions Group in Information Management Services and Knowledge Management Systems.
Eonseog Song
Senior Public Sector Specialist
Eonseog Song joined the World Bank in January 2008, as a secondee from the Ministry of Strategy and Finance in South Korea. Currently, he is working with the Public Sector Governance team at WBIPR. He has developed and delivered knowledge partnership programs on public expenditure management, intergovernmental fiscal relations and e-government procurement, while serving as a liaison officer of the South Korean government, sharing South Korea’s experiences and lessons learned from economic development and public sector reform with client countries.
Before joining the World Bank, he served as the Managing Director of International Economy and Industrial Policy Bureau in National Economic Advisory of Korea. He has over twenty years of experience in economic policy making with the Government of Korea. His diverse experience includes public finance management and budgeting, financial policy, tax policy, international economy and industry. In his early career he also served as an instructor at Graduate School of Public Administration of State University of New York. He has published several books including Explanation of Excess Land Profit Tax and How Korea Reformed Public Sector?He holds a PhD in economics.
Frederick C. Stapenhurst Senior Public Sector Management Specialist
Rick Stapenhurst joined the World Bank in 1996, and has concentrated on issues in accountability and integrity, political risk analysis, investment decision making, government policy development and implementation, and institutional analysis and assessment. He has worked throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as having spent time in the Asia Pacific and Eastern Europe.
His publications include Political Risk Around the North Atlantic (Macmillan Press/St. Martin's 1993), Industrial Democracy Today (McGraw Hill-Ryerson 1979), and numerous articles in the business and academic press.
A Canadian citizen, Mr. Stapenhurst completed his doctorate of business administration in 1989 at the International Graduate School, and has Masters degrees in Business Administration and Development Studies. Before coming to the World Bank, Mr. Stapenhurst was the Director of Multilateral Development Banks at the Canadian International Development Agency and an Adjunct Professor for International Marketing at the University of Ottawa and at McGill University.
Kaitlin Tierney joined the World Bank Institute in 2005. In coordination with the task managers, Anwar Shah and Frederick Stapenhurst, she assists in organizing training events and monitoring the Public Sector Governance program. She graduated from Cornell University with B.A. in Sociology.
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