Speakers

Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez is the Senior Director for the World Bank Group’s Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience Global Practice. In this position, Mr. Ijjasz-Vasquez leads a team of over 600 technical experts deployed across the world, leveraging global knowledge and collaborating with partners to help tackle the world’s most complex development challenges in: social inclusion and sustainability; mainstreaming resilience in all dimensions development; territorial and rural development; and urban planning, services and institutions. Before this, he was Director for Sustainable Development of the Latin America and Caribbean Region since November 2011, covering infrastructure, environment and climate change, social development, agriculture and rural development, disaster risk management, and urban development with an active portfolio of about $17 billion. From 2007 to 2011, he was based in Beijing, where he managed the Sustainable Development Unit for China and Mongolia. Earlier in his career, he managed the global trust-funded programs ESMAP and WSP in energy and water and sanitation, respectively. Mr. Ijjasz has a Ph.D. and a M.Sc. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in civil and environmental engineering, with specialization in hydrology and water resources. He has been a lecturer at the Environmental Science and Policy Program at Johns Hopkins University, and at Tsinghua University. He is a Colombian and Hungarian national.