About

Michal Rutkowski, a Polish national, is the World Bank’s Country Director for the Russian Federation. Rutkowski, an economist with an expertise in labor and macroeconomics, has worked extensively on pensions, labor, education, and health and poverty issues in Europe, the Middle East, South Asia and China, as well as on fiscal and public sector management issues in Russia, Poland, Central Asia and Africa. He was among the co-authors of the first comprehensive summary of key welfare reform issues in transition economies.

Rutkowski joined the World Bank in 1990. He was a country economist for the Russian Federation between 1995-1996, and after taking a brief leave from the Bank, returned as Sector Manager for social protection between 1998-2004, where he led a team of professionals working on pensions, labor market and social assistance reforms in 28 countries of Central and Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union, as well as in Turkey.

In 2003, he became acting Sector Director for human development in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) Region of the World Bank. One year later he took on this same role in the Middle East and North Africa Region, and in 2008 moved to an equivalent position in the South Asia Region where he led the department responsible for the World Bank’s assistance in the areas of education, health, nutrition and population, labor markets, microfinance, and social protection.

While on leave from the World Bank in 1996-1997, Rutkowski was Director of the Office for Social Security Reform of the Government of Poland and a co-author of the design of the new Polish pension system.

Prior to joining the World Bank, he was an associate economics professor at the Warsaw School of Economics.

Rutkowski holds a Ph.D. from the Warsaw School of Economics and did post-graduate studies at the London School of Economics. Rutkowski also graduated from the Executive Development program at the Harvard Business School in 1999, and from the Leadership for Collective Intelligence program run by Dialogos in 2010.