Lyaziza Sabyrova leads the regional cooperation and integration team in the Central and West Asia Department of the Asian Development Bank. It includes the Secretariat for the Central Asia Regional Cooperation (CAREC) Program.

After obtaining her PhD degree in Economics from Indiana University (Bloomington, IN, USA), Lyaziza joined ADB in 2000. She worked on infrastructure projects in the People’s Republic of China, and in Central Asia and South Caucasus regions. She was posted in ADB’s Resident Mission in the Kyrgyz Republic from 2006-2008. In the following three years, she was on a special leave from the ADB, during which she was a Deputy Director of an independent private economic think tank in Kazakhstan, the RAKURS Center for Economic Analysis. More recently, she led the preparations of ADB's Country Partnership Strategies for several Central Asian and South Caucasus countries, steered the work of the CAREC Institute, and was involved in the Department’s analytical work and knowledge management.

Vardhman Jain is an Associate Director at Deloitte India with over a decade of experience in Management Consulting. He has advised Central Ministries, State Governments, and private sector clients across India on trade and investment promotion, policy analysis, regulatory and business reforms under the Ease of Doing Business agenda, government process re-engineering, sector development, strategy formulation, framework design, and program management.

Prior to Deloitte, he worked with KPMG and EY India, contributing to large-scale transformation and reform initiatives.

Vardhman holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration (Gold Medalist) and a B.Tech in Computer Science. He is also a certified PRINCE2® Practitioner in Project Management by AXELOS Global Best Practice.

Kijin Kim is a Senior Economist in the Economic Research and Development Impact 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. He contributed to ADB’s publications on these areas including the Asian Economic Integration Report; Trade Finance Gaps, Growth, and Jobs Survey; and Asia-Pacific Trade Facilitation Report.

Before joining the 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 World Economy. 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.