World Bank Country Manager Meets Finance Minister

Georgia Wallen is the incoming World Bank (WB) Country Managerfor

Liberia. She has over 20 years of experience in international development,

with focus on strategy, crisis response, partnerships, and evaluation and a longstanding commitment to impacting the lives of the poor and vulnerable for the better. Georgia is currently a Portfolio Assistant in the Office of the WB Senior Managing Director (SMD). Her responsibilities include supporting strategy and decision-making for the Eastern and Southern Africa region; East Asia and Pacific region; and core corporate functions, including WB budget and human resources. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020,

Georgia’s responsibilities have focused heavily on helping to define and shape WBG strategy for global crisis response. She was WB Team Leader and coauthor of the WBG COVID-19 Approach Paper (2020), which set the framework for delivery of the US$157billionWBG crisis response; coauthor of the WBG Post Pandemic Financing Framework(2021);and coauthor of the roadmap for WBG Response to Global Impacts of the War in Ukraine (2022). Georgia served as Senior Country Officer for the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Brunei country team from 2015 through 2019 with responsibilities for defining strategy, supporting client engagement, and advancing WB corporate priorities across the countries. She was WB team leader for the Philippines Country Partnership

Framework (CPF) and Performance and Learning Review (PLR) and worked extensively with the Manila based team and government counterparts. She served as Acting Country Manager for Thailand from June to November 2018based in Bangkok.

With the International Development Association (IDA), Georgia served as Senior Operations Officer with the IDA resource mobilization team. In that capacity, she helped to oversee the IDA Regional Program, was principal author of the IDA15 Retrospective Review, and co-authored the policy document underpinning the US$51.9 billion IDA 17 Replenishment. Early in her career, her research experience focused on the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative and the flagship evaluation of the IDA10- 12 Replenishments.

Her work in development includes six years with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) as part of the Caribbean Country Unit based in Washington DC and evaluation experience with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) based in Paris, France.

She has a Master in Public Policy degree from Harvard University and a Bachelor’s degree in English with focus on Second School Curriculum Development from Columbia University.

Wilson