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Ruchir Agarwal is an economist at the IMF, where he has worked in several advanced economies, emerging markets, and frontier economies. Most recently, he facilitated the multilateral response to COVID-19 as the Head of the IMF Global Health and Pandemic Response Task Force. He was also the head of delegation to the G20 Joint Finance & Health Task Force. Prior to that he was the lead economist for India during COVID-19; the lead economist for Mongolia’s economic reform program during its 2017-18 crisis; as well as the lead economist for Sweden, Lebanon, and Bhutan. He also served in the financial crisis management division, where he worked on the implementation of the Cyprus rescue package during the European debt crisis, and on financial sector reforms in several crisis cases. His research on electronic money, negative interest rate policy, finance & trade solutions to fight the pandemic, and the role of talent in advancing innovation and long-run growth has been cited by the Financial Times, WSJ, New York Times, The Economist, Washington Post, etc. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 2012—where he also won the Allyn A. Young Prize for excellence in teaching. As a Research Fellow at M-RCBG he will focus on “Financing Global Goods.” The project will explore ways to increase strategic investments in global goods (such as pandemic prevention, frontier science, and climate security) that benefit every nation. His project is sponsored by Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor and Director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government.

Marlene Amstad is economics and finance professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, the Co-Director of its Fintech Center at the Shenzhen Finance Institute and serves as Vice-Chair of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA). As the former deputy director at the Swiss National Bank she headed the investment strategy and financial market analysis unit.  Marlene also worked at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Credit Suisse and the Swiss Economic Institute. She served as adviser to over ten Asian central banks and coordinated the Asian Bond Fund (ABF) initiative of EMEAP (Executives' Meeting of East Asia-Pacific Central Banks). Marlene regularly holds research fellowships at central banks, most recently with the Bank of Japan, Bank of Finland and BIS and is a fellow at ABFER (Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research). Marlene’s research focuses on international finance and monetary economics. Her research is published in refereed and policy-oriented journals. She is the coeditor of “Central Bank Digital Currency and Fintech in Asia” with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) covering contributions by eight Asian central banks, IMF, BIS and Luohan Academy. Her latest book is “The Handbook of China’s Financial System” including banking, bonds, the stock market, asset management, the pension system, and financial technology (forthcoming Nov 2020, in Princeton Press).  Marlene is an expert in developing new economic indicators based on big data for policy makers and investors. Working at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, she created the “Fed New York staff underlying inflation gauge (UIG)” which is published monthly. She built a quantitative credit rating system for corporate clients at Credit Suisse, and at Swiss Economic Institute a recession indicator based on company surveys. As a Senior Fellow at M-RCBG, her research was on data innovation and financial regulation. Her faculty sponsor was Ken Rogoff, Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Email: marleneamstad@hks.harvard.edu

Ed Balls was UK Shadow Chancellor from 2011 to 2015 and co-chaired the Inclusive Prosperity Commission with former US Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers, which reported in January 2015. He served in the British Cabinet as Education Secretary (2007-2010). He was previously the UK Minister for Financial Services (2006-2007) and the Chief Economic Adviser to the UK Treasury (1997-2004), during which time he was the Chair of the IMFC Deputies and UK G20 Deputy. He was the Labour & Co-operative Member of Parliament for Morley and Outwood (2010-2015) and MP for Normanton (2005-2010). As Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury (1997-2004), Balls led the design of policies including independence of the Bank of England, the New Deal jobs programme, the Five Tests Euro assessment, Sure Start, tax credits and the national minimum wage. As a Treasury Minister, he was commissioned by the G7 Finance Ministers to prepare a report with Sir Jon Cunliffe (now deputy Governor of the Bank of England) on Economic Aspects of the Israel-Palestine conflict. At the Department for Children, Schools and Families, Balls brought together schools and children's policy for the first time in the Children's Plan and pushed through radical and progressive policies including raising the education and training age to 18, reform of the social work profession, establishing the support staff negotiating body and extra investment in youth services and short breaks for disabled children and their families. As Shadow Chancellor, he was awarded the Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year and the Political Studies Association Politician of the Year. Balls received his MPA from ����vlog���� in 1990, was a teaching fellow in Harvard’s Department of Economics (1989-90), and was a leader writer and columnist at the Financial Times (1990-94) where he was the WINCOTT Young Financial Journalist of the Year. He has also written regularly for the Guardian, New Statesman and Tribune and co-authored a number of books, papers, articles and pamphlets. His faculty sponsor is Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor of Harvard University and Director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. Email: ed_balls@hks.harvard.edu

Reza Baqir served as the Governor of Pakistan’s central bank, the State Bank of Pakistan, during May 2019 – May 2022. He led Pakistan’s financial response to the Covid-19 pandemic that led to a quick economic rebound while lowering public debt and preserving foreign exchange reserves over 2020-21. During his time as Governor, he also initiated a series of initiatives to digitize Pakistan’s financial sector to promote innovation and inclusion. These included (i) a that generated close to US$5 billion in in foreign currency funding; (ii) that spurred ; (iii) a new ; (iv) Pakistan’s first instant payment system ; and (v) a dedicated policy——to support women’s access to finance. In June 2019, Reza successfully negotiated a new IMF program, and completed 6 subsequent reviews, that stabilized the economy. He led two landmark reforms in this period: introduction of a flexible exchange rate regime, a first for Pakistan, and changes to the central bank law to strengthen its independence. Before Pakistan’s central bank, Reza worked for 19 years at the International Monetary Fund and 2 years at the World Bank. He headed the IMF’s office in Egypt during 2017-19 as IMF Senior Resident Representative and oversaw the successful implementation of the IMF’s loan program, then the largest in the Middle East region. For 4 years he headed the IMF's Debt Policy Division that oversees IMF’s work on sovereign debt sustainability and restructuring, worked on several sovereign debt restructurings, and represented the IMF in the meetings of the Paris Club. Previously he was Deputy Chief of the Emerging Markets Division overseeing IMF’s loans in emerging markets and policies towards managing capital flows. Reza’s research has been published in the Journal of Political Economy and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, amongst other journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley and an A.B. (Magna cum Laude) in Economics from Harvard University.  Reza was an M-RCBG Senior Fellow from 2022-2024, where his work focused on efficient and workable international frameworks for timely resolution of sovereign debt distress in emerging markets. 

David Blumenthal MD, MPP is Professor of Practice of Public Health and Health Policy at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health and a Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is also Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine, Emeritus, at Harvard Medical School. From 2013 to 2023, Dr Blumenthal was president and CEO of the Commonwealth Fund, a health care philanthropy based in New York City with the mission of improving the functioning of the US health care system. From 2009 to 2011 he was National Coordinator for Health Information Technology under President Obama, where he led the implementation of the HITECH Act and of the concept of the meaningful use of electronic health records. Prior to 2009, Dr. Blumenthal was a primary care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and Director of the Institute for Health Policy at MGH and Harvard, which he founded.

Dr. Blumenthal is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and a member of the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine, where he has also served as a National Correspondent. He is also a member of the board of New England Journal AI, a new publication focusing on artificial intelligence in medicine and health. He serves on the board of Aledade, a company supporting value based primary care and on the boards of the Carol Emmott Foundation and the Josiah Macy Foundation. He has served previously on the boards of the University of Chicago and University of Pennsylvania health systems. He holds a Doctor of Humane Letters from Rush University and Honorary Doctors of Science from Claremont Graduate University and the State University of New York Downstate.

Edoardo Campanella is an economist and author. He works as senior global economist at UniCredit Bank and he recently published with Marta Dassu’ Anglo Nostalgia: the Politics of Emotion in a Fractured West (Oxford University Press). He writes globally syndicated columns for Project Syndicate, and his writings have appeared, among the others, in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Survival and many other media outlets. Edoardo is also David Rockefeller Fellow of the Trilateral Commission, where he co-directed the Taskforce on Global Capitalism in Transition — co-chaired by Carl Bildt (former Swedish PM), Kelly Grier (US Chair and Americas Managing Partner, Ernest & Young) and Takeshi Ninami (CEO of Suntory Group). He previously worked for the economic research departments of the World Trade Organisation, the World Economic Forum and the Italian Senate. In 2016, he was a shortlisted author for the Bracken Bower Prize, awarded by the Financial Times and McKinsey to promising writers under the age of 35. He holds an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School that he attended on a Fulbright scholarship. While at Harvard, he was awarded the Certificate for Teaching Excellence for his teaching activity. He is also affiliated with ISPI, the Aspen Institute, the Centre for the Governance of Change of IE University in Madrid and the Council for Italy and the United States. He was an M-RCBG Senior Fellow 2021-2023. Email: edoardo_campanella@hks.harvard.edu

Camilla Cavendish is an award-winning journalist and commentator who sits as an independent peer, Baroness Cavendish of Little Venice, in the UK House of Lords. She is the author of , published by Harper Collins May 2019. She was a senior advisor to Prime Minister David Cameron, as Head of the Policy Unit in Number Ten Downing Street. She received her MA from Oxford University in Politics, Philosophy and Economics and her MPA from the Kennedy School, where she was a Kennedy Memorial Trust Scholar. She has expertise on a wide-range of policy issues, including healthcare. She was the author of the Cavendish Review, An Independent Review into Healthcare Assistants and Support Workers in the NHS and social care settings, commissioned by the UK Government in 2013. She has been a Non-Executive Director of the Care Quality Commission, the UK’s hospital and care home regulator. She is best known as the author of the UK government’s “sugar tax” on sugary drinks, announced in 2016 to counter obesity, and for her work on child protection. As Assistant Editor and OpEd columnist for The Times newspaper, her campaign to expose miscarriages of justice in family courts convinced the Brown government to legislate, to open those courts to the media. She is the recipient of the Paul Foot/Private Eye award for investigative journalism; Campaigning Journalist of the Year and Wincott Senior Financial Journalist.  She is published regularly in The Sunday Times and The Financial Times, appears regularly on BBC and ITV television, and has presented programmes for BBC Radio 4 on topics including the age divide and air pollution. She is chair of Frontline, a pioneering non-profit which recruits and trains high performing graduates to be social workers. She started her career at McKinsey & Co and went on to be CEO of a public-private joint venture which regenerated London’s south bank area. Her current research is entitled: The coming demographic challenge, the emergence of the “Super Old”, and the need for new conceptual frameworks. Her faculty sponsor is Jeff Liebman, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Public Policy. Email: camilla_cavendish@hks.harvard.edu

David Grigorian has had a successful career at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, DC, having worked on some of the most visible and impactful IMF programs of the past two decades. Throughout his tenure at Monetary and Capital Markets Department, Dr. Grigorian has provided technical assistance advice to governments in a variety of emerging market and advanced countries on issues of sovereign debt restructuring, debt market development, and financial crisis management. For his role in helping the authorities of Jamaica restructure their sovereign debt in 2010, Dr. Grigorian received an Outstanding Effort Award from the IMF’s Managing Director. During 2016-18, Dr. Grigorian was in Asia Pacific Department, where he led the IMF mission to Bhutan and conducted oversight of financial sector in Singapore and Malaysia. In his previous position as the desk economist on Iraq, he helped the country authorities prepare the federal budgets for 2007-09 under occupation and complete two back-to-back Stand-By Arrangements that led to the world’s largest sovereign debt relief ever provided by the Paris Club. Prior to joining the IMF in 2001, Dr. Grigorian worked at the World Bank, where he managed banking sector restructuring projects in Central Asia. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland at College Park and has published extensively in refereed economic journals on a wide range of issues including sovereign debt, banking and capital markets, growth and institutions, remittances, and fiscal performance, and his research is cited widely. Dr. Grigorian also co-founded and led Policy Forum Armenia, a virtual anti-corruption think-tank uniting nearly 50 researchers and public policy professionals with interest in Armenia’s development. As an M-RCBG Senior Fellow, (2023-2025) his focus was on sovereign debt restructuring issues, working with his faculty sponsor, Carmen Reinhart, Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System at Harvard Kennedy School. Email: dgrigorian@hks.harvard.edu

Jane S. Hoffman is a former New York public official and author. Her latest book “Your Data, Their Billions-Unraveling and Simplifying Big Tech” was chosen as a top ten non-fiction book by Amazon and an “Editor’s Choice.”  The book outlines the datafication of our lives and the digital marketplace. She has served as Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner for the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs. Hoffman was a Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor and also served as Commissioner of Public Authority Reform in New York. She founded and chaired the Presidential Forum on Renewable Energy, a non-profit that created the first-ever national presidential debate on energy security and climate. Her first book “Green-Your Place in the New Energy Revolution” detailed a renewable energy plan for the United States and was excerpted in Scientific American. She previously served as Deputy Commissioner to the United Nations, Consular Corps and International Business where she conducted an nationally awarded economic impact study. She was President of the Sister City Program, a nine country cultural exchange. Hoffman has served on more than ten boards and commissions including Northwestern University from which she holds a B.S. She previously served as an Advanced Leadership Fellow and Senior Fellow at Harvard University. As an M-RCBG Research Fellow she will focus on corporate social responsibility. Her faculty sponsor is John Haigh, Co-Director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government and Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Email: jane_hoffman@harvard.edu

Ira Jackson has served in a wide range of leadership positions in the public, the private, academic and nonprofit sectors. He has extensive experience in a variety of roles in higher education at four private and two public universities (Harvard, Claremont, Brandeis, MIT, Arizona State and the University of Massachusetts Boston). Ira served as a top aide to two big city mayors (Newark and Boston), and helped to create the training program for big city mayors at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. He has been dean of both a school of business (Peter Drucker School of Management at the Claremont Colleges) and a school of public policy (McCormack G