#AllmeansALL: A World Bank and Global Education Monitoring Report webinar

Gordon Brown is the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

He served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2007 to 2010 and is widely credited with preventing a second Great Depression through his stewardship of the 2009 London G20 summit. He was one of the first leaders during the global crisis to initiate calls for global financial action, while introducing a range of rescue measures in the UK. In April 2009, he hosted the G20 Summit in London where world leaders committed to make an additional $1.1 trillion available to help the world economy through the crisis and restore credit, growth and jobs. They also pledged to strengthen financial supervision and regulation.

Previously, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1997 to 2007, making him the longest-serving Chancellor in modern history. During ten years at the Treasury, Gordon masterminded many of Labour’s proudest achievements including the Minimum Wage, Sure Start, the Winter Fuel Allowance, the Child Trust Fund, the Child Tax Credit and paid paternity leave. His record on global justice includes his negotiation of debt cancellation for the world’s poorest nations and the tripling of the budget for life-saving aid. His time as Chancellor was also marked by major reform of Britain’s monetary and fiscal policy as well as the sustained investment in health, education and overseas aid.

Gordon served as the Labour Member of Parliament for Dunfermline East (1983- 2005), and for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (2005-2015) in his home area of Fife in Scotland. He was elected as Leader of the Labour Party serving from 2007-2010. His roles in parliament and government have continued to shape his views on the importance of education as a fundamental right of every child in the world and the key to unlocking better health, greater social stability, more rights and opportunities for women and a higher standard of living. He is a passionate advocate for global action to ensure education for all. In his role as UN Special Envoy for Global Education, he works closely with key partners to help galvanise support for the new International Financing Facility for Education that proposes a groundbreaking way to finance education for every child. He is Chair of the High Level Steering Group for the Education Cannot Wait fund for education in emergencies, Chair of the Inquiry on Protecting Children in Conflict and Chair of the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity. He also serves as Chair of the Advisory Board for the Catalyst Trust for Universal Education and is an Advisor to the Board of the Graça Machel Trust.

In addition to his global education work Gordon is a Senior Panel Member at the Kofi Annan Foundation initiative on Electoral Integrity and is a Patron of the Burma Campaign UK. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Patron of the Parliamentary Outreach Trust.

Gordon is the author of several books including Beyond the Crash: Overcoming the First Crisis of Globalisation, My Scotland, Our Britain and My Life, Our Times.

Gordon has a PhD in History from the University of Edinburgh and spent his early career working as a lecturer. He is married to Sarah Brown, the President of Theirworld and Chair of the Global Business Coalition for Education, and the couple live in Fife, Scotland with their two sons, John and Fraser.

Follow on Twitter: @OfficeGSBrown

Maria Victoria Angulo is a Colombian Social Economist graduated from Universidad de Los Andes (Bogota), she holds a Master´s Degree in Development Economics from the same university, and also a Master´s Degree in Specialized Economic Analysis from Pompeau Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain). She counts with more than 20 years of work experience on educational policy making and managing. She has worked for around 15 years in several Colombian governmental entities, in which are encounter: The National Planning Department, the Ministry of Development, the Distrital Secretariat of Treasury and the Ministry of Education. In the Ministry of Education, Maria Victoria served as Director and Deputy Director for the Promotion of Higher Education. Additionally, she worked as Executive Director of the Foundation Entrepreneurs for Education (original in Spanish Fundación Empresarios por la Educación), and afterwards, she was assigned as Secretariat of Education of Bogota.

For Maria Victoria, those experiences have transformed her on a personal and professional level. Through them, she has been able to meet closely her country and its needs; she has learned widely about the different categories and stages of education, within different points of view: government, teachers, university headteachers, private sector foundations, and civil society organizations. Which all together contribute to place education as a main point in the public agenda. 

Maria Victoria´s devotion is to identify and link people´s dreams, projects and resources that could build together quality education policies. The Ministry Maria Victoria believes that is the education the path to reintegrate, to walk forward equity and to a better country for everyone.

Follow on Twitter: @VictoriaBxE

Gillian Triggs is UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Protection. She was appointed on 9 August 2019. Triggs is a highly renowned expert in international law who has held a number of eminent appointments in service to human rights and the refugee cause, including most recently as the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission and the Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow and Emeritus Professor at the University of Melbourne.

In her new function, Triggs will oversee UNHCR’s protection work for millions of refugees, internally displaced, stateless and other people of concern.

An Australian national, she has previously held a number of leadership roles, including as President of the Asian Development Bank Administrative Tribunal, Chair of the UN Independent Expert Panel of Inquiry into Abuse of Office and Harassment in UNAIDS, Dean of International Law at the University of Sydney and as Director of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law in London.

Triggs has been closely associated with a number of not-for-profit organizations throughout her career, including most recently as Chair of Justice Connect, an organization that connects 10,000 lawyers to provide pro bono advice to asylum-seekers and others in need of legal support in Australia. She is also the author of many books and papers on public international law.

Follow on Twitter: @GillianTriggs

Manos joined the Report team in August 2011 from Oxford Policy Management, a development policy consultancy. He has worked as a monitoring and evaluation expert in education sector projects including: a public expenditure tracking and service delivery survey of secondary education provision in Bangladesh; the evaluation of a basic education project in the western provinces of China; the mid-term evaluation of the Education For All Fast Track Initiative; the annual reporting of progress in the implementation of the Second Primary Education Development Project in Bangladesh; a basic education capacity building programme in six states in Nigeria; the evaluation of an in-service, cluster-based teacher training programme in Pakistan; and the country study of the Out of School Children Global Initiative in Indonesia. He holds a BA in International Economics from the Athens University of Economics and Business and an MSc in Development Economics from the University of Oxford. His DPhil was a study of technical education and the labour market in Egypt, completed at the Centre for the Study of African Economies of the University of Oxford.

Follow on Twitter: @GEMReport, @ManosAntoninis

Dr. Jaime Saavedra leads the Education Global Practice at the World Bank Group. He rejoined the World Bank Group from the Government of Peru, where he served as Minister of Education from 2013 through 2016. During his tenure, the performance of Peru’s education system improved substantially as measured by international learning assessments. Throughout his career, Dr. Saavedra, a Peruvian national, has led groundbreaking work in the areas of poverty and inequality, employment and labor markets, the economics of education, and monitoring and evaluation systems. He has held positions at a number of international organizations and think-tanks, among them the Inter-American Development Bank, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, International Labour Organization, Grupo de Análisis para el Desarrollo and the National Council of Labor in Peru. He has also held teaching and research positions in academia and has published extensively. Prior to assuming his role as Minister for Education of Peru, he had a ten-year career at the World Bank where, most recently, he served as Director for Poverty Reduction and Equity as well as Acting Vice President, Poverty Reduction & Economic Management Network. Dr. Saavedra holds a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University and a Bachelor's degree in economics from the Catholic University of Peru.

Follow on Twitter: @JaimeSaavedra22

Josh Josa is acting QUEST Team Lead and leads the Disability Portfolio within USAID’s Office of Education. In his current role, he focuses on working with USAID Missions and Washington to ensure education programming quality, equity and sustainability as well as the inclusion of people with disabilities throughout the education system. He is also a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer serving in Kenya from 2010-2012. 

Follow on Twitter: @JoshJosa

Daniel Mont, the co-president of the Center for Inclusive Policy, has extensive experience in the area of disability and inclusive development, and has worked as a Senior Economist with the World Bank and a wide range of other international development agencies, governments, and civil society organizations. He served as chair of the UN Statistical Commission’s Washington Group on Disability Statistics analytical working group, worked with UNICEF and UNESCO on building inclusive Education Management Information Systems, and with UNDP, OHCR, and ESCAP on developing indicator frameworks for reporting on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as well as with ILO and several countries on developing disability determination eligibility tools for social protection programs and incorporating the extra costs of disability into social protection program design. He has published many articles on disability and inclusion in the areas of disability measurement and the relation of disability to poverty, social protection, education and employment.

Follow on Twitter: @mont_daniel

Having first studied Sociology and then Community Education, Euan’s career has firmly focused on youth and community development, in Scotland, Europe, and globally. After spending several years working with disadvantaged children and young people in Glasgow, Euan led the development of numerous national participation projects for LGBTQI young people in Scotland. Following this, he managed various LGBT youth services and was instrumental in setting up new services across the country.

Euan left youth work for a brief spell, first to volunteer in community development programmes in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and then to help set up Scotland’s first LGBT community sports organisation. As part of this role he secured government funding for a Pride House- an LGBT dedicated space open throughout the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

At the end of 2013, Euan moved to Brussels to take on his current role within IGLYO- The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer & Intersex (LGBTQI) Youth & Student Organisation. With 101 member organisations in 40 Council of Europe Member States, IGLYO advocates for LGBTQI youth rights internationally and builds the confidence, skills and experience of LGBTQI young people to become leaders within the LGBTQI and human rights sectors. Through his leadership, Euan has significantly increased the size and profile of the organisation and has worked closely with the board and staff team to build IGLYO’s expertise and reputation on the subject of inclusive education.

In 2016, IGLYO launched the LGBTQI Inclusive Education Project- the first comprehensive account of LGBTQI inclusion within state schools in 49 European countries. Using ten comparable indicators, each country was assessed against national laws, policies and practices which foster safer and more inclusive learning environments. The first edition of the report, index and map was released in 2018 and will be updated every three years to monitor progress and maintain pressure on national governments who are failing to protect LGBTQI young people within education. More information on the project can be found at www.education-index.org

Follow on Twitter: @euanplatt

Miss. Vibhu Sharma is a Disability and Inclusion Research Consultant with Theirworld, a Global Children’s Charity, and is engaged in conducting a research on inclusive education and effective assistive technology for children with disabilities. She is a member on the Global Board of Generation Unlimited, a multi-stakeholder, global partnership to ensure that all young people are in education, skill development or employment by 2030. She represents young people with disabilities on the board, which comprises of other members like the CEO of the World Bank, the Executive Director of UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, the chief of ILO, among others. A visually impaired herself, Vibhu has a MSc in Inclusive Education from the University of Edinburgh, and strenuously works to ensure that persons with disabilities have an equal right to access educational and employment opportunities. Vibhu had successfully convinced the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), India’s highest examination conducting body, to allow the students with visual impairment write their exams independently on the computer with a screen-reader as against the traditional practice of using amanuensis. This was a gigantic policy change, empowering high school students with disabilities in India.

An experienced research, creative writing, and strategic writer, Vibhu is a Correspondent to the Yourcommonwealth blog and a contributor to the Voices of Youth platform. Vibhu is also the Co-chair of the Global Partnership for Children with Disabilities – Youth Council, hosted by UNICEF, a member on the Youth Engagement and Leadership Committee of the World Blind Union, besides being a member of several other international networks working for human and disability rights. She has been invited an honorary speaker at many international conferences such as those organized by the Spanish National Organization of the Blind (ONCE), the World Blind Union (WBU), the International Council of Education for People with Visual Impairment (ICEVI), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), among others. Vibhu is a mentor for youth with and without disabilities at national and global levels, and has been recognized a Legends Honouree by Partners for Youth with Disabilities, USA for her mentoring initiatives. While on one side Vibhu focuses attention on equal opportunity for persons with disabilities, she also developed skills and technical capacity in writing, research, education and advocacy. Her experience and knowledge go beyond disability area and her expertise can benefit any development of humanitarian project.

Follow Vibhu @VibhuSharma_11

David Evans is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, working on education, health, and social safety nets. Previously he was at the World Bank, where he co-authored the World Development Report 2018, Learning to Realize Education’s Promise, coordinated impact evaluation work for sub-Saharan Africa, and managed education projects in Brazil. Evans has evaluated education, early child development, agriculture, health, and social safety net programs in Brazil, the Gambia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania.

Follow on Twitter: @DaveEvansPhD