Ms. Nicole Klingen is the Acting Director and Practice Manager for Digital Development in Europe and Central Asia in the Infrastructure Practice Group of the World Bank. She heads a global team working on building digital economies in developing countries to drive shared prosperity and reduce poverty. The team advises policymakers and regulators, works in collaboration with leading firms and partners, and designs investment and technical assistance programs to improve broadband connectivity and use of digital technology to address development challenges of client countries. The work covers a wide area of focus including broadband networks, mobile networks, cloud infrastructure, internet of things, and big data analytics.
The team works collaboratively across sectors to ensure the availability and use of digital government platforms, identification for development and other key foundations to harness digital development, while strengthening cybersecurity, privacy, and data protection. In this role, she oversees a portfolio of work aimed at providing knowledge and financing to help close the digital divide and make sure countries can take full advantage of the ongoing digital development revolution.
An economist with more than 24 years of technical, managerial and partnership experience at the World Bank, Ms. Klingen was most recently overseeing the country portfolios for Ethiopia, South Sudan and Sudan. In this role, she authored the Country Partnership Framework for Ethiopia. Ms. Klingen also served as Practice Manager in the health sector where she managed a team of health specialists and economists in the Bank’s global health, nutrition and population unit with a focus on delivering results for countries. Ms. Klingen also co-led the development of the WBG’s 2007 Strategy for Health, Nutrition and Population Results.
Nicole holds a master’s degree in economics and business. She speaks English, French, German, some Spanish and some Italian.