Transition Assistance Practice Group /

Betty Wilkinson

Ms. Wilkinson is an award-winning development economist producing transformational, locally owned, and sustained results in public finance policy and strategy, financial inclusion, natural resource management and agriculture, and gender mainstreaming under challenging conditions. She engages globally and locally with ministers, central bank governors, industry representatives, and leaders of development agencies, NGOs, think tanks, and local communities to facilitate evidence-based innovation and change. Ms. Wilkinson has over 30 years of professional experience in the economic growth field, including as a leading multilateral bank manager, policy advisor, field researcher, and senior government official in the finance and planning ministry of a recipient country. Betty has worked and lived long term in Africa, the South Pacific, and Asia, engaging directly in emergency environments and in transition situations in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, and Tajikistan, among others. She resides in Zambia.

Ms. Wilkinson is currently the Board Chair of Financial Sector Deepening Somalia, Board Member of FINCA Zambia, IFIT Technical Assistance Advisory Group Member, and Intermittent Advisor in the Banking and Financial Services Team in the Office of Technical Assistance, US Treasury. Previously she was the inaugural Board Chair for the Financial Sector Deepening Network of nine members across Africa, CEO of Financial Sector Deepening Zambia, and Board member of WWF Zambia. From 2003 to 2015 Ms. Wilkinson was Senior Manager and official at the Asian Development Bank (ADB). From 2012 to 2015 she was sector director for finance, public management, trade, private sector, and social protection for the Central Asia group, incorporating Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. She led Departmental and ADB-wide teams in financial sector reform and innovation, MSME development, gender, and human resources improvement in various countries such as the People’s Republic of China, Mongolia, and the Central Asia group of ten nations. Prior to joining the ADB, she worked as Associate Director at the Centre for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector (IRIS) at the University of Maryland, including as resident Director in Nepal and Zambia. At IRIS Ms. Wilkinson led major initiatives to develop model frameworks of small enterprise, agribusiness, and finance legislation. She developed key policy enhancement initiatives in countries such as China, Nepal, Russia, and South Africa.

Recent engagements have involved evidence-based traditional chief successes in local savings and lending groups, introduction of national financial education curricula and national financial inclusion strategies, gender mainstreaming in agriculture and SMEs, climate change and work on carbon credits and green economy policy, and addressing poverty and risk concerns with blended local programmes in finance, sustainable energy, and conservation agriculture in challenging locales.

She holds a BA in Business Economics from UC Santa Barbara and an MS (abd) in Agricultural Economics from Cornell University, along with recent international course certifications in Board Risk and Fiduciary Operations, Digital Money, Last Mile Agricultural Finance, and as a Gender Equality Changemaker.

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