Tetsushi Sonobe is the Dean and CEO of the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI), the Tokyo-based think tank of the Asian Development Bank that promotes the realization of a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and the Pacific through policy research and capacity building.

Born in 1960 in Tokyo, Dean Sonobe obtained his PhD in economics from Yale University and BA in economics from the University of Tokyo. His research interests are centered on the empirics of economic development, particularly the roles of industrial clusters, human capital, social capital, management practices, and market competition in industrial development in developing Asia and other regions.

Before joining ADBI in April 2020, Dean Sonobe served for six years as a vice president of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo and taught economics for thirty years at Tokyo Metropolitan University and GRIPS. Dean Sonobe is a recipient of the Nikkei Book Publication Prize and the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize, and a founding board member of the Japanese Association for Development Economics.

Albert F. Park is Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Director General of its Economic Research and Development Impact Department. He is chief spokesperson on economic and development trends and leads the production of ADB’s flagship knowledge products and support for regional cooperation fora. He has more than 2 decades of experience as a development economist and is a well-known expert on the economy of the People’s Republic of China. He has worked on a broad range of development issues including poverty and inequality, intergenerational mobility, microfinance, migration and labor markets, the future of work, and foreign investment.

He is Chair Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Economic Policy at HKUST (on leave). He served as a founding director of HKUST’s Institute for Emerging Market Studies and professor at the University of Oxford. A national of the United States, he received his bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University and his doctorate in applied economics from Stanford University.

Ronald Antonio Butiong oversees and coordinates ADB’s overall regional cooperation and integration (RCI) operations by providing relevant strategic and technical advice. He develops and maintains thematic policies, strategies, operational plans, and directional papers to guide bankwide regional cooperation and integration work and ensures alignment with ADB’s Strategy 2030.

Mr. Butiong has over 25 years of professional experience working on regional cooperation and integration and country programming. He joined ADB in February 2004 as a Programs Specialist - Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) in the former Mekong Department. He progressed to Senior Regional Cooperation Specialist and GMS Unit Head, Southeast Asia Department (SERD) in June 2008, and in February 2010, transferred to the Central and West Asia Department (CWRD) to head the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) Unit. He was promoted to IS6 in CWRD in December 2010, and in October 2012, he was transferred to South Asia Department (SARD) to head the South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) Unit. In April 2016, he was promoted to the position of Director of the Regional Cooperation and Operations Coordination Division (SARC), SARD.

Mr. Butiong was a consultant responsible for various technical assistance projects promoting subregional cooperation in ADB’s developing member countries. He was Assistant Vice President and Head of Investments of the Trust Banking Group of the erstwhile Far East Bank and Trust Company (FEBTC) in the Philippines.

Mr. Butiong holds a Master’s degree in Mathematics from Louisiana State University, United States, and graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics from De La Salle University, Philippines in 1985. He also holds a Certificate in FEBTC- Executive Development Program from the Asian Institute of Management, Philippines.

Norihiko Yamano is an economist in OECD’s Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation. He joined the OECD to work on developing harmonized national Input-Output tables and has led the work on the construction of the Inter-Country Input-Output (ICIO) database at OECD. He has played a key role in using ICIO tables to generate various, widely used, headline indicators such as trade in value-added (TiVA), carbon footprints, trade in employment and other indicators and analysis related to globalization. He has served various external Input-Output and bilateral trade-related projects including the expansion of TiVA/ICIO database for Asian development economies, APEC, Europe, Latin America and Africa as a consortium member or as an external advisor. Council member (Jan 2020-) and Vice-president (Jan 2022- ) of the International Input-Output Association.

Kijin Kim is an economist in the Economic Research and Regional Cooperation Department, Asian Development Bank. Since he joined the ADB in 2017, he has been working on trade, trade facilitation, and trade finance within the context of regional cooperation and integration (RCI). He contributed to ADB’s publications on these areas including the Asian Economic Integration Report, Trade Finance Gaps, Growth, and Jobs Survey, and Trade Facilitation and Better Connectivity for an Inclusive Asia and Pacific.

Before joining ADB, he was a research fellow of the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory at the University of Illinois since 2012. From 2004 to 2010, he worked as economist at the Bank of Korea. He earned his PhD in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2016, focusing on research within the fields of regional economics and applied econometrics, centered on the role of labor markets, the effects of heterogeneity in consumption spending, and labor market participation on regional economies.

Jong Woo Kang is Director of Regional Cooperation and Integration Division at the Economic Research and Development Impact Department (ERDI) of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). As director, he plays a role as an interface between ADB’s internal and external stakeholders on regional cooperation and integration. He is a seasoned economist with extensive knowledge and experiences on policy and strategic issues. He was Principal Economist at ERDI, Senior Advisor to the Managing Director General of ADB, and Senior Economist at the Strategy, Policy, and Partnerships Department at ADB. He leads the annual publication of Asian Economic Integration Report. Areas of his research interest include regional integration, inclusive growth, macroeconomic policies, international trade and finance, and aid effectiveness. He published articles in economics journals such as Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Applied Economics, and Journal of World Trade. Before joining ADB, he was director at the Ministry of Finance and Economy of the Republic of Korea until 2006. He had got his bachelor’s degree in economics and master’s in public administration from Seoul National University, and PhD in economics from University of Washington.

John Beirne joined ADBI as a Research Fellow in March 2019. He has over 20 years of experience as an economist in the public and private sectors. In his current role, he co-heads ADBI’s Research Department, leading research workstreams on macroeconomics, finance, and infrastructure. He is also co-managing editor of the ADBI Working Paper Series.

Previously, he worked as a staff economist at the European Central Bank in various positions for around 11 years, mainly in the areas of international policy analysis and economic research on global financial markets, capital flows, and commodities. He also worked for around six years as an economic consultant with KPMG and senior economist with DTZ in Ireland and the United Kingdom (UK), and for three years as a part-time lecturer in economics at Brunel University in the UK.

His research focuses on international macroeconomics, financial economics, and applied econometrics. He has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals in economics and finance, co-authored or coedited several ADBI books, and serves as an editorial board member of the Asian Development Review and subject editor of Asian Economics Letters. He presents his research regularly at international conferences and lectures at the University of Tokyo and Hitotsubashi University in Japan on topics related to financial globalization, monetary policy, and macro-financial risk. He is also a frequent commentator in the media on global macro issues, having interviewed with outlets such as Al Jazeera, Arirang, Bloomberg, China Daily, and RTHK. He holds a PhD in Economics from Brunel University.

Robert Elliott is an applied economist who works at the intersection of international economics, development economics, environmental and energy economics. He has a particular interest in the Chinese economy, firm behaviour, natural disasters and the impact of globalisation on the environment. He is an editor for the Sustainable Future Policy Lab, Environment and Resource Economics, a Director of the Trade, Environment, Development and Energy (TEDE) research group, a member of Water Challenges in a Changing World IGI and an Affiliate of the Lloyds Bank Centre for Responsible Business. He has published over 75 articles including papers in Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Journal of Development Economics, Energy Economics. Environmental and Resource Economics and many more. He has done consultancy for the World Bank and the European Commission.

John Lourenze Poquiz is a PhD Candidate (Economics) at King’s College London. Prior to joining King’s, he was a senior statistician of the Philippine Statistics Authority’s (PSA) National Accounts team. He also led the compilation of the Quarterly Foreign Investments report and was the lead technical coordinator of the Inter-Agency Committee on investments statistics. He earned his Master of Advanced Economics degree from the University of Adelaide. He also holds a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Santo Tomas.

Dina Azhgaliyeva is a Research Fellow at the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI). Before joining ADBI in July 2019, she worked as a Research Fellow in the energy economics division of the Energy Studies Institute, National University of Singapore. She was also a Research Fellow at the Henley Business School, University of Reading (UK) where she worked on a project ‘Kazakh-British Centre for Competitiveness’. She also worked as a leading and chief specialist for the Tax Committee at the Ministry of Finance of Kazakhstan. Her research focuses on energy policy, particularly renewable energy, energy efficiency, and energy storage. Dina has published articles on these topics in journals such as Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, Journal of Environmental Management, Energy Policy and Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment. She is currently a guest editor for the Applied Energy’s special issue “Integration of Renewable Energy in Energy Systems, Perspectives on Investment, Technology, and Policy”. She earned her PhD and MSc in economics from the University of Essex (UK). She also holds an internationally recognized teaching qualification from the Fellow of Higher Education Academy and a qualification in research career management from the Staff Educational and Development Association. More information is available here: https://www.adb.org/adbi/about/staff-profiles/dina-azhgaliyeva

Alfredo Perdiguero is the Director of the Regional Cooperation and Operations Coordination Division in the Southeast Asia Department of Asian Development Bank. He has worked in Southeast Asia for the last 20 years and has broad exposure, deep knowledge and extensive work with ADB on regional cooperation and integration issues in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA), and the Indonesia-MalaysiaThailand Growth Triangle (IMT-GT), and the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). Mr. Perdiguero also acts as the administrator of the ASEAN Infrastructure Fund, the largest initiative of the ASEAN in its history based on the member countries’ funding contributions.

Prior to joining ADB, Mr. Perdiguero was an economist in the European Union Delegation in South Africa. He also worked as a trade specialist in the Spanish Embassy in Egypt and in several NGOs in Latin America. He has been a Lecturer in Universities in Madrid, Spain and the Ateneo Graduate School of European Studies, Manila, Philippines. His career spans the private sector, the government and the academe.

Emma Aisbett is an associate professor at the ANU School of Law and the Associate Director (Research) for the Zero-Carbon Energy for the Asia-Pacific Grand Challenge at the Australian National University. She works across disciplines and sectors at the intersection of international economic regulation and the environment, most recently, on the intersection of Trade-Related Climate Policy and Green Industrial Policy. Her recent work on investment treaty reform was awarded this year's John Jackson Prize for most significantly breaking new ground by Journal of International Economic Law. In addition to publishing in leading academic journals across law, economics, political science, and engineering, she provides expertise to government, industry, and international organizations.

Rolando Avendano is an Economist at the Economic Research and Cooperation Department of the Asian Development Bank. His research focuses on financial and international economics, with an emphasis on regional integration, competitiveness and foreign direct investment.

Prior to joining ADB, he worked for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris, France. He was partnership coordinator of PARIS21 (OECD Statistics and Data Directorate), economist with the Director’s Office and the Americas Desk (OECD Development Centre), and research associate with the OECD Trade Directorate and Economics Department. Previously, he was a lecturer at the Engineering Faculty of University of Los Andes (Colombia), and research associate at University College London (UK).

A French and Colombian national, he holds a B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from University of Los Andes and a Master and PhD in Economics from the Paris School of Economics (PSE).

Christina Pak specializes in international development finance and law and policy reform. She is currently a Principal Counsel of the Asian Development Bank and is responsible for managing the Office of General Counsel’s Law and Policy Reform Program which designs, processes, and implements technical assistance projects directly to developing member countries relating to legal and judicial reforms. She oversees a diverse portfolio in the areas of environment protection and climate change, gender equality, private sector development, public-private partnerships and digital economy.

In her own technical assistance projects, Christina specializes in dispute resolution and been assisting various countries in the South Pacific region accede to the New York Convention and put in place implementing arbitration law, including Fiji, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Tonga and also assisted Uzbekistan with its new Law on International Commercial Arbitration. She also leads ADB’s judicial capacity building programs on commercial and environmental and climate change adjudication, as well assisting judiciaries in more effective and efficient handling of gender-based violence cases.

Christina also serves as ADB’s Accountability Mechanism Policy Counsel and the Office of the General Counsel’s technical assistance, partnerships and knowledge focal points and is a member of ADB’s Gender Equality, Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management, Environment and Governance Thematic Groups.

In her previous role as a project counsel at ADB, she worked on complex multi-sector projects across the Central West, Southeast and East Asia regions.

Prior to joining ADB, Christina was a legal counsel and vice president for markets and international banking at a major UK bank in Singapore and a finance associate at a large law firm in New York City.

Christina is a Steering Committee Member of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law and a Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. She is a US-qualified lawyer, admitted in the States of New York and New Jersey.

Noelle O’Brien is the newly appointed Chief of Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management Thematic Group concurrently Director, Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management Division of the Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department of ADB. Previously, Noelle was a Principal Climate Change Specialist for the Pacific region and has worked on expanding ADB’s work on mitigation investments and scaling up adaptation investments in the 14 Pacific member countries, as well as raising climate finance. A comprehensive climate and disaster risk assessment to inform resilience planning for Tonga has been a highpoint of recent work over. Prior to joining ADB, Noelle spend 7 years working with UKAID’s Strengthening Adaptation and Resilience to Climate Change in Kenya. The program invested in achieving transformational change by scaling up public and private sector innovation and investment in low carbon and adaptation products, services and assets. Noelle holds a Natural Science Degree from Trinity College Dublin and Master’s Degree in Applied Environmental Science and Development Management and has worked with the Mekong River Commission, the Center for People’s and Forests and a number of international organizations in Southeast Asia and Africa.

Yiwei Wang is Jean Monnet Chair Professor, Director of Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University of China. He is expert adviser of CCPIT Advisory Committee and Turkish TRT World Forum. The Council Member of China Center for International Economic Exchanges, CCIEE) and Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA). He was formerly diplomat at Chinese Mission to the European Union (2008–2011) and distinguished professor at Tongji University (2011–2013), professor of Center for American Studies at Fudan University (2001–2008), visiting professor of Yonsei University (2005) and Fox Fellow of Yale University (2000–2001). His recent books include China’s Answer to the Question of the Time: Building a Global Community of Shared Future, An Interconnected World: China and the Belt and Road Initiative, China Connects the World: What Behind the Belt & Road Initiative (translated into 20 versions), New World Press, April. 2017; The Belt & Road Initiative: What China Will Offer the World in Its Rise (translated in 20 versions, both book of year 2015, 2016), Haishang: Revelations of European Civilization (both in Chinese and English) and China NATO Studies Series. He delivered keynote speech on BRI at UNESCO headquarter and side event of UN General Assembly.

Peter J. Morgan is Senior Consulting Economist and Vice Chair of Research at the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI), and has been with ADBI since 2008. He has 23 years experience in the financial sector in Asia, most recently serving in Hong Kong as Chief Asia Economist for HSBC, responsible for macroeconomic analysis and forecasting for Asia. Previously, he served as Chief Japan Economist for HSBC, and earlier held similar positions at Merrill Lynch, Barclays de Zoete Wedd and Jardine Fleming. Prior to entering the financial industry, he was a consultant for Meta Systems Inc in Cambridge, MA, in energy and environmental analysis, and at International Business Information KK in Tokyo, in financial sector consulting. He earned his MA and PhD degrees in economics from Yale University. His research interests are in macroeconomic policy and financial sector regulation, reform, financial development, financial inclusion, fintech, financial literacy and financial education. In 2019 he served as the Lead Co-chair for the Task Force on The Future of Work and Education for the Digital Age for the Think 20 process, an engagement group with the G20.

Torsten Ehlers is a Senior Financial Sector Expert at the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets department in Washington DC since September 2021. He is seconded from the Bank for International Settlements, where he has been working for 10 years both at the headquarters in Basel and its representative office in Hong Kong. He has worked extensively on green bond markets and has been a member of various workstreams of the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System as well as the G20 Sustainable Finance Working Group. His research interests include sustainable finance, international banking, dollar funding and derivative markets. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, a Masters in Economics from Warwick University, UK, and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Dortmund, Germany.

Virender Kumar Duggal leads ADB’s work to support its developing member countries (DMC) use carbon pricing instruments as part of their broader climate policy architecture to achieve their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and contribute to meeting the Paris Agreement goals. In this role, he spearheads ADB’s trust funds that mobilize carbon finance to incentivize investments in low carbon technologies through bilateral and international carbon markets. He also oversees ADB’s work on providing technical and capacity building support to enhance DMCs’ ability to develop and take advantage of domestic, bilateral, and international carbon markets, and, where applicable, integrated markets to scale up their efforts in achieving their NDC targets and raising ambition over time.

Shawn Tan is senior economist at the Economic Research and Cooperation Department of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). He is a seasoned economist with broad knowledge and expertise on economic policy and international development. He joined ADB in late 2021 after spending eight years at the World Bank, where he led and participated in many investment projects and policy reports on international trade and competitiveness topics in Vietnam, the Western Balkans and Eastern European countries, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Georgia. Prior to the World Bank, he worked in the Singapore Government, where he was a trade negotiator for Singapore’s trade and investment agreements and support multinational companies in Singapore on trade facilitation issues. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics and a Bachelor of Commerce (Honors) from the University of Melbourne, and a Master of Social Science from the National University of Singapore. His research interests are broadly in international trade, economic geography, and firm productivity and performance. He has published research articles in academic journals such as Journal of Development Economics and Small Business Economics, and his full portfolio can be found here.

Shu Tian is a Senior Economist at the Economic Research and Regional Cooperation Department (ERCD) of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Prior to joining ADB, she was an Associate Professor of Finance at Fudan University in China. Her main working area is financial sector development and sustainable finance. Dr. Tian works in the teams that produce ADB’s flagship reports Asian Development Outlook and Asia Bond Monitor. Her team also works on bond market development in the ASEAN+3 economies under the Asian Bond Markets Initiative and maintains the AsianBondsOnline (https://asianbondsonline.adb.org/), an online information platform for ASEAN+3 bond markets.

Cyn-Young Park is Director of the Regional Cooperation and Integration Division in the Economic Research and Regional Cooperation Department of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). In her current capacity, she manages a team of economists to examine economic and policy issues related to regional cooperation and integration (RCI) and develop strategies and approaches to support RCI. During her progressive career within ADB, she has been a main author and contributor to ADB’s major publications including Asian Development Outlook (ADB’s flagship publication), Asian Economic Integration Report, Asia Capital Markets Monitor, Asia Economic Monitor, Asia Bond Monitor, and ADB Country Diagnostic Study Series. She has also participated in various global and regional forums including the G20 Development Working Group, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), ASEAN+3, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). She has written and lectured extensively about the Asian economy and financial markets. Her work has been published in peer reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Banking and Finance, the Journal of Financial Stability, the Journal of Futures Markets, the Review of Income and Wealth, and the World Economy.

Prior to joining ADB, she served as Economist (1999-2002) at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), where she contributed to the OECD Economic Outlook. She received her PhD in Economics from Columbia University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in International Economics from Seoul National University.