Shanta Devarajan is a professor of the practice of international development at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He was previously at the World Bank, where he was the senior director for Development Economics, the chief economist of the Middle East and North Africa, Africa, and South Asia regions and the Human Development Network. He was also a director of the 2004 World Development Report, Making Services Work for Poor People. Before 1991, Shanta was on the faculty of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and an A. B. in mathematics from Princeton University.
Nirvikar Singh is currently Distinguished Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Center for Analytical Finance at the University of California, Santa Cruz. From 2010 to 2020, he held the Sarbjit Singh Aurora Chair of Sikh and Punjabi Studies at UCSC. He has previously directed the UCSC South Asian Studies Initiative. He has served as a member of the Advisory Group to the Finance Minister of India on G-20 matters, and Consultant to the Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance, Government of India. He has recently served on the Expert Group on post-Covid-19 economic recovery formed by the Chief Minister of Punjab state in India. At UCSC, he has previously served as Director of the Santa Cruz Center for International Economics, Co-Director of the Center for Global, International and Regional Studies, and Special Advisor to the Chancellor. In the 1990s, he organized one of the first major US conferences on Indian economic reform. He has authored over 100 research papers and co-authored or co-edited six books.
He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and his BSc and MSc from the London School of Economics, where he was awarded the Allyn Young Prize, Gonner Prize and Ely Devons Prize.
Neelkanth Mishra is a Managing Director, co-head of Asia Pacific Strategy and India Strategist, Securities Research for Credit Suisse. He has been rated among the best analysts in India by the Institutional Investor and Asia Money polls. He has been member of or an advisor to several government committees like the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, the Fifteenth Finance Commission and the FRBM Review Committee. He also advises businesses, and has been part of the Economic Advisory Council of the Confederation of Indian Industry for the past few years. He is a widely followed columnist in prominent newspapers and magazines. Neelkanth has worked on Metals & Mining, Indian Pharmaceuticals, Taiwan IC design, semiconductor foundries and Asian tech strategy research, based out of Mumbai, Singapore and Taipei. Prior to joining Credit Suisse, he was a Senior Technical Architect with Infosys Technologies. He has also worked with Hindustan Lever Limited and has been an entrepreneur.
Neelkanth is a gold medalist from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, graduating in computer science and engineering, and a Distinguished Alumnus Award winner. He was ranked fourth in the prestigious entrance exam to the IITs. He is currently based in Mumbai.
Indermit Gill is Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions at the World Bank. Between 2016 and 2021, he was a professor of public policy at Duke University and non-resident Senior Fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution. Gill worked at the World Bank from 1993 to 2016, where his assignments included Director of Development Policy in Development Economics; Chief Economist for Europe and Central Asia; Staff Director for the 2009 World Development Report on Economic Geography, Acting Chief Economist for East Asia and the Pacific; and Principal Country Economist for Brazil. He has published extensively on issues of middle-income countries, developing country debt, economic growth, managing natural resource wealth, labour markets and inequality. His pioneering work includes developing the concept of the “middle income trap” to describe how developing countries can stagnate after reaching a certain level of income.
He has a Ph.D. and A.M. in economics from the University of Chicago, an M.A. from the Delhi School of Economics, and a B.A. in economics from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi. He has taught at Duke, Georgetown University, the State University of New York at Buffalo and the University of Chicago.
