Keynote speakers
Björn Gillsäter, Head of the World Bank and United Nations Joint Data Center on Forced Displacement
Björn Gillsäter is the Head of the Joint Data Center on Forced Displacement, based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Prior to this, he was the World Bank Group’s Special Representative to the United Nations in New York. Björn joined the Bank in 2001 as Senior Advisor to the Nordic-Baltic Executive Director. He brings over two decades of experience of working on multilateral affairs, both as a government official with the Ministry of Finance of Sweden, and with several international organizations. Some of the other positions he has held include the Alternate Executive Director at the African Development Bank, the Chief for Multilateral System Analysis with UNICEF, the Head of the Multilateral Organization Performance Assessment Network (MOPAN), which is a function hosted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Björn has an M.A. in International Affairs from Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and Harvard Business School, an M.A. in Law and Economics from Hamburg, Gent, and Aix-en-Provence, and a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from the University of Lund, Sweden.
Beat Jans, President of the Government of the Canton of Basel-Stadt
Beat Jans, born in Riehen near Basel in 1964, holds a diploma in Agricultural Engineering (TTL) and is an Environmental Scientist (ETH Zurich). Prior to his election as President of the Government of the Canton of Basel-Stadt in 2020, Beat Jans was Vice-President of the Social Democratic Party (SP) of Switzerland, President of the SP of the Canton of Basel-Stadt, National Councilor and member of the Basel-Stadt Grand Council. Since 2021, he has been President of the Government of the Canton of Basel-Stadt.
Beat Jans (@beat_jans) / Twitter
Johannes Jütting, Executive Head of PARIS21
Johannes Jütting is Executive Head of the Partnership in Statistics for Development in the 21st Century (PARIS21). Johannes is a former member of the UN Secretary’s General Expert Group on the Data Revolution, has been co-chair and member of three consecutive UN World Data Forum Programme Committees and sits on the boards of Data2X & EDGE. He is also affiliated as a Professor with the University of Passau, where he regularly teaches courses in development economics and policy. He is a trained development economist with a PhD from Humboldt-University in Berlin with specific expertise in employment, social protection, health care financing and gender. Prior to joining PARIS21, Johannes led the Poverty Reduction Teams at the OECD Development Centre and at the Centre for Global Development Research (ZEF).
Johannes Jütting (@Jo_Jutting)/ Twitter
Juan M Lavista Ferres, Vice President, Chief Data Scientist and Lab Director of the Microsoft AI For Good Lab
Juan M, Lavista Ferres is currently the VP, Chief Data Scientist and Lab Director of the Microsoft AI For Good Lab, where he works with a team of data scientists and researchers in AI, Machine Learning and statistical modeling, working across Microsoft AI For Good efforts. These efforts includes projects in AI For Earth, AI for Humanitarian Action, AI For Accessibility and AI For Health.
Juan joined Microsoft in 2009 to work for the Microsoft Experimentation Platform (EXP) where he designed and ran randomized control experiments across different Microsoft groups. Juan also worked as part of the Bing Data Mining team, where he led a group applying data mining, machine learning, statistical modeling and online experimentation at a large scale as well as providing data services for Bing.
Juan started the Microsoft efforts related to SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), and his work has been published in top academic Journals including Pediatrics. His work has been covered in New York Times, CNN, Chicago Tribune, USNews, USAToday , and over 100 news outlets around the world.
Juan is involved in working to define the data science discipline within Microsoft, and is currently the editor of the Microsoft Journal of Applied Research (MSJAR).
Before joining Microsoft, Juan was the CTO and co-founder of alerts.com. Previously, he spent 6 years in Washington working at the InterAmerican Development Bank applying data science to understand the impact of programs for reducing poverty and inequality in Latin-America and the Caribbean. Juan has two computer science degrees from the Catholic University in Uruguay, and a graduate degree in Data Mining and Machine Learning from Johns Hopkins University. He lives in Kirkland, WA, with his wife and three children. He has been a speaker in the US at Strata, IEEE, Berkeley, Cornell, and in many countries including Canada, Switzerland, Argentina, Colombia , Costa Rica, and Uruguay, and he also was a TedX Speaker.
Juan M. Lavista Ferres | LinkedIn
Peter Speyer, Head of Data, Analytics & AI
Peter is Head of Analytics, Data & AI at the Novartis Foundation, accelerating how data and analytics further the Foundation’s mission to improve population health inequity. Peter co-founded Novartis’ transformational data42 program which enables the use of the company’s deep pre-clinical, clinical and real world data to accelerate and improve drug R&D. Prior to his work at Novartis, Peter was Chief Data & Technology Officer at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington in Seattle. He managed the data for the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study and created IHME’s global public data catalog Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx) and innovative interactive data visualizations.
Peter Speyer (@PeterSpeyer) / Twitter
Georges-Simon Ulrich, Director-General of the Federal Statistical Office of Switzerland
Prof. Dr. Georges-Simon Ulrich, was appointed Director-General of the Federal Statistical Office of Switzerland by the Federal Council on 1st October 2023. He studied Business Administration in Switzerland, the USA (University of Virginia, Darden Business School) and Australia, where he obtained his DBA at the University of Southern Queensland with a thesis on Stakeholder management and communication. He is also Professor in strategic management and research methods at the University of Applied Sciences in Business Administration Zurich. Between 1992 and 2010, Mr Ulrich worked in private enterprise, holding various management positions in market and opinion research. From May 2011 to September 2013 he was Director of the LUSTAT statistical office in Lucerne and Vice Chair of the UN Statistical Commission.
Prof. Dr Georges-Simon Ulrich | LinkedIn
Panellists
Ward Anseeuw, Lead Technical Specialist, responsible for the establishment of the Global Land Observatory
Dr Ward Anseeuw, a development economist and policy analyst, is a research fellow at the Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD). He is presently seconded to the International Land Coalition as a Lead Technical Specialist responsible for the establishment of the Global Land Observatory. His work focuses mainly on issues of agricultural and land policies, agrarian and land reforms, as well as to participatory approaches of data generation, governance and advocacy regarding land.
Claudia Baranzelli, Policy Analyst, OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities
Claudia Baranzelli works as a Policy Analyst in the Economic Analysis, Data and Statistics Division (CFE/EDS) at the OECD, where she leads the Geospatial Lab and manages projects in various fields related to territorial development. Claudia holds an MSc in Environmental Engineering with a specialisation in mathematical modelling and a PhD in Urban, Regional and Environmental Planning, from Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Claudia previously worked at the EC-JRC as a project leader for the development of spatial analysis tools and indicators applied to land use and urban dynamics, energy, transport, and Africa-EU Strategic Corridors.
Jean-Luc Bernasconi, Member of the Board of Directors, Head of Foundations and Quality Division, Chief of Staff, Office of the Directorate, Swiss Agency for Cooperation and Development
Jean-Luc Bernasconi has over 27 years of experience in international development. He worked for several multilateral agencies (UNDP, the World Bank and the African Development Bank), including field-based positions (Vietnam, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Tunisia). He also worked for the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) of the Swiss Confederation, where he was Chief of Operations for SECO’s economic development cooperation. Mr. Bernasconi joined the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in 2015, first AS Deputy Head of the Humanitarian Aid Division, leading operations in Europe, Asia and Americas and more recently as Head of the Foundations and Quality Division and Chief of Staff of the Directorate. Mr. Bernasconi holds a degree in economics.
Jean-Luc Bernasconi | LinkedIn
Nadja Braun Binder, Professor of Public Law, University of Basel and President of the Swiss Federal Statistical Commission
Nadja Braun Binder received her doctorate from the University of Bern in 2005 and habilitated at the German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer in 2017. From 2001 to 2011, she worked in the Swiss Federal Chancellery, at the end as Head of the Legal Section. She has been a professor of public law at the University of Basel since August 2019. She also heads the Electronic Public Institutions and Administrations Research Forum (e-PIAF: https://ius.unibas.ch/e-piaf) and has been President of the Swiss Federal Statistical Commission since April 2022.
Nadia Braun-Binder (@braun_binder) / Twitter
Kristine Joy S. Briones, Assistant National Statistician of the Community-Based Statistics Service of the Philippine Statistics Authority
Kristine is currently handling the 2022 PSA-led Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS) of over 600 cities and municipalities in the Philippines. Previously, she was a research analyst at the University of Oxford for the longitudinal project, Young Lives. While at Oxford, her research focused on the causes and consequences of child poverty, the cognitive abilities of the youth, and teen marriage and parenthood in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. In 2018, their team were runners-up in the OxTalent awards of the University of Oxford for their innovative use of digital technology and interactive data visualizations on child poverty to foster learning and improve impact and public engagement. She has had consultancy engagements with various international organizations such as the United Nations Population Fund and the Asian Development Bank Economic Research Department. She has presented papers at conferences and spoken at academic events in the Philippines and abroad.
Kristine has a master’s degree with merit in Impact Evaluation for International Development from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom under the University’s International Development Postgraduate scholarship and another master’s degree in economics under a graduate fellowship at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in statistics and has attended Ph.D. courses in Economics in UP Diliman.
Lizzie Chikoti, Commissioner of the National Statistical Office of Malawi
Lizzie Chikoti holds a Master of Arts degree in Economics obtained in 1999 and a Bachelor of Social Science degree (Economics and Statistics) obtained in 1987, both from the University of Malawi (Chancellor College). Lizzie is a Statistician by profession with over 30 years’ experience in research and survey work and over 20 years’ experience in managerial work.
Being Head of the National Statistical Office, Lizzie oversees the production, analysis and dissemination of various survey results in the NSO.
Petra Keller Guéguen, Head of the Director General's Office of the Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO).
Petra Keller Guéguen is responsible for the further development and strengthening of international and national affairs, but also for the strategic orientation of the office, political affairs and the development of the necessary legal basis in general.
Petra Keller Guéguen completed her Master's degree in Sociology at the University of Zurich and started her work at the FSO in 2002 in the social assistance statistics (asylum and refugee field). In 2016, she took over the project management office before being appointed Deputy Head of the Directorate's affairs department in 2013. Petra Keller Guéguen then became Deputy Head of the new Strategy and DG’s Office section in 2017, where she contributed to the integration of the FSO’s planning and strategic processes. She was also responsible for the planning, administration and follow-up of the Governing Board’s meetings. She was appointed by Federal Councillor Alain Berset as Head of the Director General's Office in July 2020.
Petra Keller Guéguen | LinkedIn
Petra Keller Guéguen (@GueguenPetra) / Twitter
Clean Kaske-Kuck, Director for Policy, Advocacy and Member Mobilization at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)
Clea Kaske-Kuck is Director for Policy, Advocacy and Member Mobilization at WBCSD. In her role, she leads advocacy and policy development for WBCSD members, manages relationships with academia and civil society organizations, and drives collective business action towards key global summits to ensure business is part of the global policy agenda and presents concrete solutions. Clea previously worked for over 12 years at Cargill, in multiple roles of growing responsibility in the areas of corporate responsibility, sustainability, policy and communications out of the company’s offices in the US, China, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Clea graduated from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 2007 with a two-year Masters in Public Policy degree as a German government McCloy Scholar. She worked at the World Bank in Washington DC as well as for the US Congress for two years in total after graduating from Stanford University with honors in international relations in 2003.
Clea Kaske-Kuck (@CleaKuck) / Twitter
Emmanuel Letouzé, Director of Data-Pop Alliance
Emmanuel Letouzé is the Director of Data-Pop Alliance, a researcher at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, a fellow at MIT and Harvard, and co-founder of OPAL, who works on data, technology, statistics and AI for development and democracy. He served on Eurostat’s Expert group on private data for official statistics and was previously an Economist for UN Global Pulse and UNDP in New York and a technical assistant in statistics for the French government in Vietnam. He holds a BA in Political Science and MA in Economic Demography from Sciences-Po, an MA in Economic Development from Columbia University, and a PhD from UC Berkeley, followed by a post-doc at MIT.
Emmanuel Letouzé, PhD | LinkedIn
Emmanuel Letouzé, Phd (@ManuLetouze) / Twitter
Adrian Lovett, CEO, Development Initiatives
Adrian Lovett is CEO of Development Initiatives, an organisation dedicated to applying the power of data and evidence to build sustainable solutions that create an equitable and resilient world. Previously, he was a commissioner on the UN Broadband Commission and Co-chair of the World Economic Forum Council on the Connected World. Adrian has held leadership roles for over two decades at the World Wide Web Foundation, ONE, Oxfam and Save the Children, among others.
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/adrianlovett
Adrian Lovett (@adrianlovett) / Twitter
Chris Maloney, Program Officer in the Gender Equity and Governance Program, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Chris Maloney manages a portfolio of grants that aim to increase the use of high-quality evidence in social and economic policies that affect developing countries, primarily in Africa.
Previously, Chris worked at USAID in a variety of senior leadership roles, including as assistant to the administrator of the Bureau for Policy, Planning, and Learning, and as acting assistant administrator of the Bureau for Africa. In addition, Chris spent five years at the Millennium Challenge Corporation as the managing director for country selection. He has lived and worked in over 20 countries across Africa, including as a management consultant for both McKinsey & Company and Genesis Analytics, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Chris holds both an MBA and an MPA in International Development from Harvard, and a BA in economics and African/African-American Studies from Stanford.
Paula McLeod, Head of Statistics Profession and Team Leader for Data for Development, UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
Paula McLeod is head of the Statistics Profession and Team Leader for Data for Development in the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. She leads the network of statisticians and data enthusiasts working across the FCDO to promote the responsible use of trustworthy, inclusive data to strengthen our understanding of what works in international development and diplomacy, increase impact and enhance progress towards achieving the SDGs. She has built a career on the foundations of data and analysis, informing decision-making, action and ultimately – a better world.
Paula McLeod (@StatsPaula) / Twitter
Laura McGorman, Director of the Data for Good at Meta program
Laura McGorman is the Director of the Data for Good at Meta program, which focuses on sharing privacy preserving datasets with governments, nonprofits, and researchers to address crises. Prior to joining Meta, Laura held positions during the Obama Administration at the US Department of Commerce, Opower, the World Bank and USAID. She has a BA from Columbia University and a Masters in Development Economics from Harvard.
Celina Malehloa Molato, Director of the Bureau of Statistics of Lesotho
Celina Malehloa Molato has been the Director of the Bureau of Statistics in Lesotho since 2017, responsible for implementation of the 2022/23 – 2026/27 NSDS II which has for the first time mainstreamed gender statistics across the entire NSS to address not only the data gap but also production of sectoral data disaggregated by gender, children, men and women including people living with disability.
Yusuf Murangwa, Director General of the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda and Chair of PARIS21
Mr Murangwa Yusuf is a professional statistician and operational researcher with 20 years of experience in statistics development. He has worked on a wide scope of statistics including: labour, education, national accounts, prices, agriculture, population censuses and poverty statistics among others.
He has focused on building the capacity of the national statistics system in Rwanda and advocating for the use of evidence in policy and decision-making.
He’s interests are in developing administrative data systems, use of technology in statistics production to improve quality, timeliness and efficiency and establishing an enabling environment for big data.
Yusuf Murangwa (@yusuf_murangwa) / Twitter
Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, Deputy Director-General and Director of the Department of Knowledge of the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, Norad.
Håvard Mokleiv Nygård is a Deputy Director-General and Director of the Department of Knowledge of the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, Norad. Dr. Nygård came to Norad from the position of Research Director at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, PRIO. From 2014 to 2021 he was a Senior Researcher, and later Research Director, at PRIO.
Håvard Mokleiv Nygård (@havardmn) / Twitter
Darlene Padron-Haylock, Senior Sustainable Development Officer, Ministry of Sustainable Development, Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management, Belize
Mrs. Padron-Haylock holds a Master’s degree in Economic Sustainable Development from the Galen University in Belize. She has been with the SDU for the past 9 years. The Unit is Belize’s focal point for the Sustainable Development Goals for Agenda 2030, championing for sustainable development efforts and initiatives nationally, regionally, and internationally. Mrs. Padron-Haylock and her team coordinate the mainstreaming of Sustainable Development initiatives within the national and sectoral plans and policies to ensure that projects/programmes are in coherence with Agenda 2030 and its 17 SDGs.
Elena Proden, Senior Specialist and Team Leader, Strategic Implementation of the 2030 Agenda Unit, UN Institute for Training and Research
Elena Proden (PhD) leads a UNITAR team working on strategic planning, data and monitoring in support of SDGs. The focus of support is on strengthening the capacities of NSOs around the world and other stakeholders to unlock the full value of data for sustainable development while ensuring the respect of individuals’ rights and freedoms. Elena has been working on capacity development on data partnerships, governance and planning, and applied research and policy recommendations on leveraging new data sources, in particular, citizen science data under Crowd4SDG project. She is also current Chair of the Global Network of Institutions for Statistical Training.