DR. MAHMOOD AYUB

Dr. Mahmood Ayub got his B.A. in Economics from Manchester University, England and Ph.D in Economics from Yale University, United States. Dr. Ayub served for almost 30 years in various capacities at the World Bank.  His last assignment was as the Director of Strategy and Operations for Africa. At the World Bank, he  worked in the research and strategy departments of the World Bank, but has also worked many years in operations, including serving as the World Bank's representative in Egypt and Bolivia.  He speaks six different languages, English, French, Spanish, Farsi, Arabic (not fluent), Urdu and Pashto (mother tongue).

His research interest is in macroeconomic policy, private sector development, trade and capacity development issues. He has published widely on poverty and economic development issues.

Dr. Ayub is   serving as the UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative for Turkey since September 2006.

DR. SELIM JAHAN

Dr. Selim Jahan is the Director of Poverty Practice in United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).  Prior to that, he was the Senior Adviser and Cluster Leader, Strategies and Policies for Poverty Reduction in the Bureau for Development Policy (BDP) between 2006 and 2007. He served as the Deputy Director of the Human Development Report Office (HDRO) during 1996-2001 and as a Policy Advisor in the HDRO from 1992-1996. During 1992- 2001, he was a member of the Core Team that authored the Human Development Reports.

Before joining UNDP in 1992, Dr. Jahan held different positions in universities, national governments and other international organizations. He was a Lecturer  at the University of Dhaka and McGill University, Canada  and a Visiting Fellow, School Of Public Policy, University of Maryland. Dr. Jahan has served as an Adviser, USAID, Dhaka, Bangladesh (1988) and as the Economic Adviser, Planning Commission, Government of Bangladesh (1989-90). He has also worked as a Consultant and an Adviser to various international organizations including ADB, ILO, UNDP, UNESCO, the World Bank and numerous NGOs including Grameen Bank, BRAC, and CARE during the 1980s and the early 1990s. He holds a Ph.D in Economics from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He has a M.A. in Economics and a B.A. (Honors) in Economics with a First Class in both from University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.  

Alan Doig is a Professor of Public Services Management at the Teesside Business School. His areas of consultancy, teaching and research are public services management, where he specialises in the impact of change and the issues of governance, and fraud management where he focuses on the operational and organizational issues relating to prevention, detection and investigation of fraud and corruption. His research has included over 40 National Integrity System [NIS] country reports for the Dutch and UK governments. His consultancies are concerned with national anti-corruption strategies, managing anti-corruption agencies and local government anti-corruption work in the Middle East, Africa and East Europe. He was a member of the Group of Specialists on Public Ethics at Local Level, Steering Committee on Local and Regional Democracy, Council of Europe, responsible for the Model Initiatives Package On Public Ethics At Local Level. He has been Policy Fellowships group advisor for the "Democratic Governance, Transparency and Accountability" team of fellows in the 2005-2006 program funded by the Open Society Institute. He was lead consultant editor of the Technical Guide to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption [UNCAC]. Alan Doig is currently a Council of Europe long-term advisor to the Turkish government's Ethics Council, based in Ankara.

Professor Doig will be speaking on poverty eradication, the donor poverty agenda, aid, corruption
and institutional reform in failing or failed states at the ICSS.

DR. BIRGITTA SWEDENBORG

Dr. Birgitta Swedenborg is an economist and former vice President and Research Director, Center for Business and Policy Studies (SNS) in Stockholm, Sweden. Before that she was vice President of another Stockholm-based research institute, the Industrial Institute for Economic and Social Research (IUI). Her research has ranged from topics in international trade, particularly the role of multinational companies, to welfare state issues and political economy, including constitutional political economy. She has served as an expert on many government studies and was a member of the Economics Commission, a special commission of academics appointed by the Swedish government to analyze the causes and cures of Sweden’s severe economic crisis in the early 1990s. She was also co-director of a major US-Swedish research project on the Swedish welfare state and a follow-up of that study, organized by SNS and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in the US. Among her published work are The Multinational Operations of Swedish Firms (1979), Turning Sweden Around with Assar Lindbeck et al. (1994), The Welfare State in Transition with Richard Freeman and Robert Topel (1997) and Democratic Constitutional Design and Public Policy with Roger Congleton (2006).

Hans Tson Söderström received his PhD from the SSE in 1974 and was appointed Docent at the school in 1978. From 1970 until 1984 he was Research Fellow, Senior Fellow and finally Deputy Director at the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University. Between 1985 and 2002 he served as President and CEO of SNS – the Swedish Center for Business and Policy Studies. In 2004 he returned full time to SSE to become President and CEO of the school’s executive education branch. After the merger with IFL in 2005 he served as Chairman of the Board of the merged company until June 2007. He is now Senior Advisor to the SSE. He is also Vice Chairman of the Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius Research Foundation.

Since 1992 Hans Tson Söderström has served part time as Adjunct Professor of macroeconomic analysis and policy in the Department of Economics at Stockholm School of Economics.  Professor Söderström’s main area of interest is macroeconomic policies in small open economies. With Martin Flodén he is engaged in a research project on “Macroeconomic policy in aging and globalized economies”. He will deliver a paper entitled "The
Nordic Model - embracing globalization and sharing risks" at the ICSS.