A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmental organizations, but some are semi-autonomous agencies within government or are associated with particular political parties, businesses or the military. Think tanks are often funded by individual donations, with many also accepting government grants.
The Brookings Institution, often stylized as Brookings, is an American think tank that conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in economics, metropolitan policy, governance, foreign policy, global economy, and economic development.
Sir James David Wolfensohn was an Australian-American lawyer, investment banker, and economist who served as the ninth president of the World Bank Group (1995–2005). During his tenure at the World Bank, he is credited with the focus on poverty alleviation and a rethink on development financing, earning him recognition as a banker to the world's poor. In his other roles, he is credited with actions that brought Chrysler Corporation back from the brink of bankruptcy, and also improving the finances of major United States cultural institutions, including Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. He served two terms as President of the World Bank on the nomination of U.S. President Bill Clinton, and thereafter held various positions with charitable organizations and policy think-tanks including the Brookings Institution.
The International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) is an international, non-profit organisation founded in 1987. Based in Arlington, Virginia, United States, the organization assists and supports elections and electoral stakeholders. Since 1987, IFES has worked in 145 countries and has programs in more than 50 countries throughout Asia-Pacific, Africa, Eurasia, the Middle East, and North Africa, and the Americas.
Nancy Birdsall is an American economist, the founding president of the Center for Global Development (CGD) in Washington, DC, USA, and former executive vice-president of the Inter-American Development Bank. She co-founded CGD in November 2001 with C. Fred Bergsten and Edward W. Scott Jr. and served as president until 2016. Prior to becoming the President of CGD, Birdsall served for three years as Senior Associate and Director of the Economic Reform Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her work at Carnegie focused on issues of globalization and inequality, as well as the reform of the international financial institutions. During 1993 to 1998, she oversaw a $30 billion public and private loan portfolio at the Inter-American Development Bank, the largest of the regional development banks. Before joining the Inter-American Development Bank, Birdsall spent 14 years in research, policy, and management positions at the World Bank. Most recently she served as the director of the Policy Research Department.
Daniel Kaufmann is the president emeritus of the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), which resulted from the merger of the Revenue Watch Institute – Natural Resource Charter. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he was previously a senior fellow, and until July 2019 served in the international board of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and in a number of advisory boards on governance, anti-corruption and natural resources and has also been in high-level expert commissions such as at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. Prior to that, he was a director at the World Bank Institute, leading work on governance and anti-corruption. He was also a senior manager and lead economist at the World Bank, writing and working on many countries around the world, and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University. He has also served in other boards and councils in the past, including at the World Economic Forum.
Homi Kharas is a British economist who has been a senior fellow and deputy director for the global economy and development program at the Brookings Institution since 2005.
Johannes F. Linn is a nonresident senior fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development, housed within the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution. He is also a distinguished resident scholar of the Emerging Markets Forum, senior advisor at the Results for Development Institute (R4D) and senior research fellow at the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie).
Leonardo Martinez-Diaz serves as Senior Director for Climate Finance to U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry. Prior to joining the State Department in 2021, Martinez-Diaz was the Global Director of the Sustainable Finance Center at the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C. At WRI, he led a team of researchers working to promote the flow of public and private finance to environmentally-sustainable activities, including climate adaptation and mitigation. Martinez-Diaz is author, with Alice C. Hill, of Building a Resilient Tomorrow: How to Prepare for the Coming Climate Disruption. He also served on the Climate-Related Market Risk Subcommittee convened by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. He served as co-editor of the Subcommittee's final report, Managing Climate Risk in the U.S. Financial System.
Tarik Yousef el-Magariaf is an economist who has worked as the chief executive of Silatech and as a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on the Arab World. He specialises in economies of the Arab world.
Djavad Salehi-Isfahani is a professor of economics at Virginia Tech, and a visiting fellow at the Middle East Youth Initiative at the Wolfensohn Center for Development housed in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution. His expertise and research focus is in economics, demographic economics, energy economics, and the economics of Iran and of the larger Middle East.
The International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) is an international, nonprofit organization that specializes in global education and development. IREX works with partners in more than 100 countries.
Nora Lustig is the Samuel Z. Stone Professor of Latin American Economics and the Director of the CEQ Institute at Tulane University, and a non-resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development and the Inter-American Dialogue.
Development Gateway, Inc. is an international non-profit organization that provides technical tools and advisory services to country governments and development organizations.
Innovation districts are urban geographies of innovation where R&D strong institutions, companies, and other private actors develop integrated strategies and solutions to develop thriving innovation ecosystems–areas that attract entrepreneurs, startups, and business incubators. Unlike science parks, innovation districts are physically compact, leverage density and high levels of accessibility, and provide a “mash up” of activities including housing, office, and neighborhood-serving amenities. Districts signify the collapse back of innovation into cities and is increasingly used as a way to revitalize the economies of cities and their broader regions. As of 2019, there are more than 100 districts worldwide.
Kent E. Calder was the interim dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), serves as the director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies, and is also the Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of East Asian Studies at SAIS. Calder previously served as the vice dean for faculty affairs and international research cooperation at SAIS.
The East Asian Bureau of Economic Research (EABER) is a forum for economic research and analysis of the major issues facing the economies of East Asia.
Silatech is an organization based in Qatar, founded by Her Highness Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser. The current CEO of this organization is Mr. Hassan Al Mulla. Silatech means "your connection" in Arabic. The initiative seeks to create jobs and economic opportunities for young people in the Arab world, targeting 18- to 30-year-olds. by 2016, Silatech claims to have helped 200,000 young Arabs to obtain jobs. The initiative’s model involves building partnerships with governments, private companies and NGOs.
Marcela X. Escobari is a Bolivian-American government official and diplomat currently serving as the Assistant Administrator of the Latin American and Caribbean Bureau at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) since January 13, 2022. She previously worked as a Senior Fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., where she led the Workforce of the Future initiative.
