Lawrence Carter, Director of the International Finance Corporation Small and Medium Enterprise Department, Washington DC.

Laurence Carter is the Director of the Small and Medium Enterprise Department which is a joint department of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the World Bank.  The Department supports IFC's advisory services teams around the world and manages IFC's relationships with its partners.
Laurence joined IFC in 1993 and held positions in the Corporate Planning Department and the Central and Eastern Europe Department, where he led financial markets business development in Moscow.
Prior to joining IFC, Laurence worked for 10 years as an economist in Botswana, Malawi, Swaziland and the south Atlantic island of St Helena.
Laurence holds degrees in economics from the Universities of Cambridge and London, and the CFA.

Kristtian Rada, Acting Manager, Business Enabling Environment, LAC Advisory Services Office

Jaime Alva, General Manager, Lima Municipality

José Manuel Sieiro Negreira, Director of Links between States and Municipalities, Federal Commission for Regulatory Improvement, Mexico

Adam Day, Manager Economic Programs, Asia Foundation, Indonesia

Adam Day is Manager of Economic Programs for The Asia Foundation in Indonesia, where he leads a $10 million economic development program focused on licensing and regulatory reform. Before joining the Foundation, Adam served as interim Executive Director and USAID Advisor to AmCham Indonesia, working on business policy and public-private partnerships. Adam is a graduate of Cornell University, and The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He has also worked as a business journalist in the US and as a case writer on international business issues at the Harvard Business School. 

Yehia K. El Dozdar, IFC PEP Program, El Cairo, Egypt

Yehia K. Eldozdar is a project analyst under the Business Regulatory Reform Program of The IFC (PEP MENA) Business Enabling Environment Pillar. He Received his BA in Economics and a minor of International Relations in Political Science from the American University in Cairo. His received his Msc in Economic Development and International Trade with merit from the University of Reading in the UK. Yehia has been active in the area of Small and Medium Enterprise Policy development for over 7 years, where he worked in the technical office of the Minister of Economy, Foreign Trade and Finance in Egypt. During his time in the technical office of the Minister, Yehia worked for the Small and Medium Enterprise Policy Development Project (a partnership project between the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the International Development Research Center (IDRC and the Ministry of Finance. Yehia's main area of Specialization is legal and regulatory framework for creating and how to create an enabling environment for business start-ups and the informal economy. 

Cesar Cordova, Director Jacobs and Associates Consulting, Paris, France

Albert Berry, Professor Economics, University of Toronto, Canada

Albert Berry, Ph.D. (Economics-Princeton), is an emeritus professor of economics at University of Toronto. He taught economics at the University of Western Ontario and worked at the Research Department of the World Bank under Hollis Chenery on agriculture, employment and small enterprises. In 1975, he moved to the University of Toronto, where he later helped found the Centre for International Studies Programme on Latin America and the Caribbean, which has received support by the Ford Foundation, Tinker Foundation, the Canadian Foundation for the Americas (FOCAL) and the IDRC. He also was one of the founders of the International Development Studies at Scarborough College. Key books include "Poverty, Economic Reform, and Income Distribution in Latin America" (Lynne Rienner, 1998), which represented a major contribution towards our understanding of the social and economic impact of the economic reform process in Latin America; and "Labor Market Policies in Canada and Latin America: Challenges for the New Millennium"(Kluwer, 2001). 

Luke Haggarty, General Manager of the IFC Office for Advisory Services in Latin America (a)

Fernando Villaran, ex- Minister of Labor Peru, Director SASE, Peru

Fernando Villaran (MA -Catholic University, Peru; Industrial Engineer-UNI, Peru) is currently CEO of SASE (Seguimiento Análisis y Evaluación) a consulting firm specialized in economic development (www.sase.com.pe). Between July 2001 and June 2003, Fernando Villaran worked as Minister of Labour and Employment Promotion under the Toledo's administration. During his tenure, he created the program Perú Emprendedor, designed and implemented the employment écheme "A Trabajar Urbano".  In 2004, he led the Comisión Organizadora del Centro de Planeamiento Estratégico (CEPLAN), designed to rebuild the nacional planning system in Peru. He is currently member of several distinguished executive boards such as the Corporación Financiera de Desarrollo - COFIDE, Consejo Nacional de Educación - CNE, and Consorcio de Investigación Económica y Social - CIES. He has taught strategic planning, political economy, comparative economics and development planning in the major universities in Lima. He has published on employment and entrepreneurship such as the chapter on "Experiencia en el Ministerio de Trabajo y Promoción del Empleo" (2005) in Activistas e intelectuales de sociedad civil en la función pública en América latina, editor: Carlos Basombrío, IEP, Lima; and Popular Wealth: passion and glory of small enterprise, The Peruvian Congress Editorial Fund, Lima, 1998.  

Juliano Assunçao, Associate Profesor, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro

Juliano Assunção is Assistant Professor of Economics at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. His research interests are primarily focused on microeconomic aspects of economic development. Current research comprises occupational choices and credit markets, financial deepening, immigration, informality, economic implications of tax systems and local institutions. 

Alexis Diamond, Results Measurement Unit, SME Deparment, IFC HQ

Carmen Pages, PhD Economist, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington DC

Saul Morris, Evaluation Officer, DFID, British Ministry for International Development

Saul Morris is a Statistics Adviser working with the Latin America team of the United Kingdom ministry for overseas aid (DFID, the Department of International Development). He is responsible for promoting monitoring and evaluation of DFID and partner government investments in improving the livelihoods of the poor. He is trained in economics as well as in epidemiology, and was previously a research unit Head in London University, and a research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC. 

Zheng Zhang, Economist Americas Branch, Canadian International Development Agency, CIDA

Zheng Zhang, economist at the Americas Branch at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). His main areas of interest are PSD, economic development, trade policy, debt and migration and diasporas. Mr. Zhang worked previously as analyst with CIDA's International Financial Institution Division with a focus on World Bank/IMF related fields. 

Edgard Rodriguez, Senior Program Specialist, International Development Research Centre, Canada

Ph.D. (Economics-U of Toronto) is a Senior Program Specialist with GGP, based at IDRC's Ottawa headquarters. His experience on labour market and enterprise development ranges from lending and technical assistance operations to impact evaluations in Latin America and Southeast Asia. He has worked for the Operations Evaluation Department at the World Bank in Washington, D.C.; the Economic Studies and Policy Analysis Division at Finance Canada; the Southeast Asia Department at the Asian Development Bank in Manila; and the Policy and Planning Division for Europe, Middle East and Maghreb at the Canadian International Development Agency. His recent publications include research on international migration and remittances, firm dynamics, investment and industrial policies. 

Miguel Jaramillo, Senior Policy Advisor and Researcher, GRADE, Peru

Miguel Jaramillo Baanante is an economist, main researcher of Group of Analysis for the Development - GRADE, in Lima, Perú. He received the degree of bachelor from Catholic University of Peru and then, he received degrees of Master and PhD. of Economics from University of California, San Diego. His research interests are labor economy, institutional analysis and social policies. 

Javier Portocarrero, Director (a), Peru Consortium for Social and Economic Research

Bernard Kilian, INCAE, Costa Rica

Amy Angel, FUSADES, Fundación Salvadoreña para el Desarrollo, El Salvador

Agricultural economist, specializing in rural development and natural resource issues, having studied at Texas A&M University.  She is currently Chief of the Natural Resources Division of the Salvadoran Foundation for Economic and Social Development, FUSADES.  Angel was an advisor to the Minister of Agriculture from 1999 to 2004 and served as an advisor to the Salvadoran negotiating team for CAFTA. 

Javier Iguiñiz, President of the Board, Peru Consortium for Social and Economic Research (*)

Jan ter Wengel, Professor Master in Economics, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Bogotá, Colombia, Advisor to the United Nations and to the Asian Development Bank

Ph. D. Universidad de Carolina del Norte, Chapel Hill, Carolina del Norte, EE.UU. Ha sido Consultor Económico en Berenschot Moret Bosboom como Asesor del gobierno de Nigeria; Profesor de Comercio Internacional en la Facultad de Estudios Interdisciplinarios de la Universidad Javeriana; Funcionario de la Comunidad Andina de Naciones; Profesor de Economía Internacional en la Vrije Universiteit, de Ámsterdam; Holanda; Consultor de las Naciones Unidas para Nepal; Asesor del Institute of Studies in Industrial Development en Nueva Delhi, India; Asesor del Banco Mundial para Zimbabwe; Asesor del Banco Asiático de Desarrollo para el Ministerio de Desarrollo Industrial de Sri Lanka; Asesor del Banco Asiático de Desarrollo para el Ministerio de Desarrollo Industrial de Indonesia; Asesor de la Comunidad Económica Europea para Letonia. Actualmente es Profesor Investigador del Departamento de Economía y Profesor en la Maestría en Economía de la Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. 

Ximena Zavala, General Manager Peruvian Confederation of Enterprises

Juan Diego Zelaya, General Manager, Tegucigalpa Municipality, Honduras

Ricardo Furman, Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist, IFC Office for Advisory Services in Latin America

Andrés Rius, Team Leader Globalization, Growth and Poverty Program, International Development Research Centre, Canada

Ph.D. (Economics-Notre Dame) is Team Leader of GGP, based at IDRC's Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (Montevideo). His interests include political economy analysis of economic policies, processes of institutional reform in less developed countries, macroeconomic policy, and public sector economics. He has published on those subjects and taught at the Universidad de la República (Uruguay) and the Universidad Católica del Uruguay.