The Governance of FID
FID is governed by its own Board of Directors, chaired by MIT development economist and Nobel Laureate, Esther Duflo.
Esther Duflo
Economist, President of the Fund for Innovation in Development
Esther Duflo is a French-American economist. A professor at MIT in the United States, she is co-winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics, which she shares with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer. She is the youngest laureate and the second woman to win the prestigious distinction. A specialist in development economics, Esther Duflo is world-renowned for her work on poverty. In particular, with her research group, she pioneered the use of randomized controlled trials in economics to scientifically validate what works and what does not in development economics.
Christophe Bories
Representative of the Ministry of the Economy and Finance
Christophe Bories is a senior civil servant in the Treasury Department of the French Ministry of the Economy and Finance. He has devoted most of his career to international issues, in the central administration (office of international debt, European financial instruments, preparation of summits), as an economist at the World Bank or as Head of the regional economic service in Australia. After serving as Deputy Director of Bilateral Economic Relations and Attractiveness, he has been Deputy Director of Multilateral Affairs and Development since April 2020.
Jean-Sébastien Conty
Representative of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs
Jean-Sébastien Conty has been Deputy Director of Development at the MEAE since September 2021. He previously served as Coordinator during the French Presidency of the G20 and G8, and Head of the International Economic Governance Office at the MEAE (2010-2012). He then served as Advisor for African Affairs at the Permanent Representation of France to the European Union in Brussels from 2012 to 2015, then Chief of Staff to the Africa Director of the European External Action Service (EEAS) in Brussels from 2015 to 2017. In 2017, he was appointed Political Advisor at the Embassy of France in the United States (Washington DC).
Thomas Melonio
Representative of the Agence française de développement
Thomas Mélonio joined the Agence française de développement (AFD) in 2005. Before joining the Research Department, he was first in charge of several research publications (La lettre des économistes, Afrique contemporaine, Regards sur la Terre). From 2012 to 2017, he became deputy advisor and then Africa advisor to the President of the Republic. Since 2018, he has been Executive Director of Innovation, Research and Knowledge at AFD.
Juliette Seban
Executive Director of the Fund for Innovation in Development
Juliette Seban is the Executive Director of the Fund for Innovation in Development (FID). As specialist in public policy evaluation and holder of a PhD in development economics, she worked in the research teams of the Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and The International Rescue Committee (IRC). She then served as Secretary General of the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Evaluation of Public Policies (LIEPP) at Sciences Po before becoming Director of FID in March 2021.
Jean-Michel Severino
President of Investisseurs et Partenaires
Since 2011, Jean-Michel Severino has been President of Investisseurs et Partenaires, a group of impact funds dedicated to small and medium-sized enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa. He was Director of Development at the French Ministry of Cooperation, Vice-President for East Asia at the World Bank (1996 – 2000), and Director General of the Agence française de développement (AFD) from 2001 to 2010.
Stefanie Stantcheva
Professor of Economics at Harvard University
Stefanie Stantcheva is Professor of Economics at Harvard University (United States). Winner of the 2019 Best Young Economist Prize, awarded by the daily Le Monde and the Cercle des économistes, her work focuses on taxation and explores in particular the impact of taxation on innovation. Her research aims to optimize tax policy and the tax system.
Leonard Wantchekon
Professor of Political Science and Economics at Princeton University
Leonard Wantchekon is a Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, as well as Associated Faculty in Economics. He has made substantive and methodological contributions to the fields of Political Economy, Economic History and Development Economics, and has also contributed significantly to the literature on political distortions and development, education and social mobility. Léonard Wantchekon is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Econometric Society and a member of the Executive Committee of the International Economic Association. He has served as Vice President of the American Political Science Association and on the Executive Committee of the Afrobarometer Network. Finally, he is the Founder and President of the African School of Economics, which opened in Benin in 2014.