AVPN Webinar: Financing Solutions for Social Protection in COVID-19 Response and Recovery

Joanne is the Regional Advisor in UNDP Indonesia’s Innovative Finance Lab (IF Lab) and shares her time between the Indonesia country office and the Bangkok Regional Hub (BRH). She provides policy advice and technical assistance on financing the SDGs to the IF Lab and countries in Asia Pacific.

Joanne is passionate about generating development results through innovative financing mechanisms. Over the past six years she has been supporting countries in Asia Pacific to strengthen planning and budgeting systems to deliver on climate change actions and SDG targets.

Joanne holds an MSc. Environment and Development from the University of London. Prior to joining UNDP, Joanne worked for 12 years with UK DFID as Livelihoods and Climate Change Advisor developing social protection, disaster management, urban poverty reduction and climate change adaptation programmes in Africa and South Asia before joining UNDP BRH in 2013.

She is the mother to three inquisitive children, wife to one incredible husband and enjoys music and reading in her rare spare time!

Gisela is the Executive Director of Jollibee Group Foundation, the corporate social responsibility arm of the Jollibee Foods Corporation (JFC). JFC operates the Philippines’ largest food service company and has over 3,000 restaurants worldwide.

Her decades of experience in development work has focused on corporate social responsibility, bridging leadership and social innovation. Gisela obtained her postgraduate degree from the George Washington University. She has also completed her coursework for a PhD in Leadership Studies from the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. She currently serves as the President of the Association of Foundations, the largest network of foundations and NGOs in the country.

Shagun Sabarwal is Director of Policy, Training and Communications at J-PAL South Asia, and Director of the CLEAR South Asia Centre.

She leads the advancement of J-PAL South Asia’s partnerships with governments, donors, civil society organizations, and J-PAL affiliates to establish new research, disseminate policy lessons, and scale up successful social programs. She also provides strategic and technical leadership to J-PAL/CLEAR South Asia’s capacity building engagements, working closely with public, private, and social sector stakeholders to build a strong monitoring and evaluation ecosystem in South Asia. She is currently a principal investigator for research on the adaptation of the Graduation approach by governments, and on enhancing frontline health worker motivation and performance in India.

Prior to joining J-PAL, Shagun was an Evaluation Specialist with 3ie and a Postdoctoral Fellow at Population Council. Her previous work has included research on maternal and child health, adolescent health, and intimate partner violence. She completed her doctorate in public health from Harvard University.

Hidayat Amir started his career as a civil servant at the Ministry of Finance in 1995. He has a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Economics from the University of Queensland, Australia in 2012 with a research topic, “Tax Policy, Growth and Income Distribution in Indonesia: A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis”. Has expertise including in the fields of fiscal policy, tax policy, public policy, and economic modeling. In November 2019 he was appointed Head of the Center for Macroeconomic Policy, Fiscal Policy Agency, Ministry of Finance.

Balázs Horváth took up his post as RBAP Senior Economic and Strategic Advisor on Belt and Road Initiative in October 2018. As the Strategic Advisor on Belt and Road Initiative, he led the team to work with China Development Bank drafting Report on Harmonizing Investment and Financing Standards towards Sustainable Development along the Belt and Road, and now the team is working with CCIEE on the Global Governance Report. As RBAP Economic and Strategic Advisor, he led the teams that produced publications, including The Social and Economic Impact of COVID-19 in the Asia-Pacific Region, Addressing the COVID-19 Economic Crisis in Asia through Social Protection, and Position Note on Economic Aspects of Climate Change.

Prior to this, he served as the Director of the UNDP Seoul Policy Centre since June 2016. From 2012 to 2016, he served as Country Director in UNDP’s South Sudan Country Office. Beforehand, he worked in the Europe and CIS Regional Center of UNDP as Poverty Reduction Practice Leader, then as Acting Director. This followed 18 years in various positions in the International Monetary Fund. He has dealt with diverse aspects of economic policies and complex development situations, including poverty and inequality reduction, social programmes, global climate change, good governance and rule of law. He is an experienced leader with a strong analytical economic and development background and has a compelling record in management. He was the lead author of flagship publications on Human Development, and on Sustainable Development.

Balázs is Hungarian, speaks English, Russian and German, and holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.