KEYNOTE SPEAKER
• David Rothschild is an economist at Microsoft Research. He has a PhD in Applied Economics from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
He has written extensively, in both academic and popular press. His work pushes the boundaries on varying data and methods: polling, prediction markets, social media, online data, and large behavioral and administrative data.
Rothschild’s work focuses on solving practical and interesting questions including: interactions of humans and LLM-based tools, mapping and updating public opinion, the market for news, effect of advertising, finance, and an economist take on public policy.
MODERATORS
• Haishan Fu is the World Bank Group’s Chief Statistician and Director of the Development Data Group. In these roles, she leads and coordinates the Bank’s development data agenda, including oversight of cutting-edge global data public goods, pioneering public-private partnerships, globally trusted technical advisory services and innovative financing solutions, including the World Bank-hosted Global Data Facility.
A lifelong advocate for unlocking the power of data to improve lives, Haishan has been at the forefront of the global data discourse as a prominent thought leader, expert advisor and academic and policy researcher for over three decades.
Prior to joining the World Bank, she led the regional statistical development programs in Asia and the Pacific at UNESCAP and was the first Chief of Statistics of UNDP’s Human Development Report.
Haishan holds a PhD in Demography from Princeton University and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Peking University.
• Kathleen Beegle is a Lead Economist in the Poverty, Inequality, and Human Development Team of the World Bank’s Development Research Group. Her research focuses on poverty, labor markets, economic shocks and the design and implementation of household survey data collection in developing countries. She also co-leads the new World Bank Center for Research on Women and Jobs.
In previous roles at the Bank, Kathleen served as Program Leader for Human Development in Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and as Lead Economist for the Gender Group.
She has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, co-led flagship World Bank reports, and co-authored chapters in several books. Kathleen is an IZA Research Fellow and a member of the IZA G²LM|LIC Advisory Board. She also taught at Georgetown University, USA.
Kathleen holds a PhD in Economics from Michigan State University, USA, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the RAND Corporation.
PANELISTS
• Adeyemi Adeniran is the Chief Executive Officer of Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and serves as the Statistician General of the Federation.
Prior to his appointment, he was the Director of Demographic and Household Statistics at NBS. He has also served as National Coordinator for large-scale national surveys, including the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, the National Household Survey on Corruption, and the National Nutrition and Health Survey.
Adeyemi is particularly interested in social statistics and has over 30 years of experience as a statistician in both national and international organizations.
He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Demography and Social Statistics from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
• Alaka Holla is a Senior Economist in the Human Development Chief Economist Office at the World Bank and the Program Manager of the Bank’s Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund (SIEF), a multi-donor trust fund that supports the use of randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental methods to inform policies in education, health, water and sanitation, and early childhood development in low- and middle-income countries.
Alaka joined the World Bank as a Young Professional and has worked in both research and operational roles, across a wide range of countries and in multilateral initiatives focused on measuring child development and estimating program costs.
Her research examines the quality of health care, discrimination, early childhood development and education, and cost analysis. Her work has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals, including the American Economic Review and the Journal of Public Economics.
She holds a PhD in Economics from Brown University and completed postdoctoral research at Harvard University and Innovations for Poverty Action.
• Andrew Dillon is a Research Associate Professor of Development Economics and Director of the Research Methods Cluster at the Global Poverty Research Lab (GPRL), based at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, USA.
His research explores how productivity improvements can enhance welfare in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), as well as identifying the methods and measures that establish these causal relationships.
Andrew’s current work examines market organization in developing countries and the productivity-enhancing investments that households can make in education, new agricultural technologies, health and nutrition.
He is involved in ongoing projects implemented in partnership with governments, private sector firms and NGOs across Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali and Nigeria.
• Charles Lau is the Deputy Global Research Director of Gallup, where he provides technical advice on study design, sampling, questionnaire design, training, data collection, data processing and analysis. He also drives methodological and technical innovations that enhance data quality, cost-effectiveness, and operational efficiency.
Before joining Gallup, Charles served as Chief Research Officer at GeoPoll and as Director of the Survey Research Program at RTI International. He has led end-to-end research projects in more than 50 countries.
Charles holds a PhD in Sociology and an MSc in Epidemiology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Brown University.
• Elisabeth Root is the Deputy Director for Gender, Vulnerability and Health Equity at the Institute for Disease modeling at the Gates Foundation.
Before joining the foundation, she was a Professor of Geography and Epidemiology at The Ohio State University, USA, and served on the leadership team of the Institute for Population Research.
Her academic research examined the long-term and intergenerational impacts of health and development programs on women and children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) as well as spatiotemporal patterns of mortality and disease. She also worked on modeling the contributions of social determinants to health and wellbeing.
Elisabeth holds a Ph.D. in Health and Medical Geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.
• Frauke Kreuter is Co-Director of the Social Data Science Center and a faculty member of the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland, USA. She also serves as Professor of Statistics and Data Science at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Germany.
An elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association, Frauke was honored with the 2020 Warren Mitofsky Innovators Award by the American Association for Public Opinion Research.
Beyond her academic work, she founded the International Program for Survey and Data Science, designed in response to increasing demand from researchers and practitioners for the appropriate methods and right tools to face a changing data environment.
Frauke is also the co-founder of the German-language podcast Dig Deep and the Coleridge Initiative, which advances data-driven research and policy around human beings and their interactions for program management, policy development and scholarly purposes by enabling secure, efficient and effective access to sensitive data about society and the economy.
• Lisandro Martín is the World Bank Group Director of the Outcomes Department in the Senior Managing Director's Office.
In this role, he oversees the setting of outcome targets, building of internal and external capacity on results and approaches to measuring outcomes across critical cross-cutting themes, such as climate, gender, jobs and private sector capital mobilization. Lisandro also engages with multilateral development banks and key partners to align common metrics and approaches.
He has over two decades of experience in the World Bank Group Bank and served in several leadership positions at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), contributing to the organization’s impact and results. Earlier in his career he worked at the African Development Bank on operations and impact measurement.
Lisandro holds a MSc degree in Public Affairs from Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, where he was a Fulbright scholar.
• Talip Kilic is the Acting Manager and Senior Program Manager of the World Bank Development Data Group's Survey Unit, which houses the International Comparison Program (ICP) – an initiative that collects comparative price data and GDP expenditures to produce purchasing power parities - the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) - the World Bank’s flagship household survey program - and Survey Solutions – an open-source software for design, implementation and management of large-scale surveys and censuses.
As a manager, Talip oversees the ICP’s worldwide data collection and processing activities, the LSMS portfolio of face-to-face and phone surveys, research on survey methods and training on survey design, as well as Survey Solutions’ software development, maintenance and training activities.
As a researcher, he focuses on poverty, agriculture and labor in low- and middle-income countries, as well as survey methodology and data integration to improve the quality of household and farm surveys. Talip was also a core team member of the World Development Report 2021: Data for Better Lives.
He holds a PhD in Economics from American University in Washington, D.C., and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and International Relations from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, USA.