Sir Suma Chakrabarti has extensive expertise in international development economics and policy-making, as well as in designing and implementing wider public service reform. He is the President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), one of the pre-eminent multilateral development banks with a strong record of financing urban infrastructure. He also serves as a Commissioner of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate.

Sir Suma has dedicated much of his career to international development work in the UK Government. Before moving to the EBRD, he was Permanent Secretary at the British Ministry of Justice, and was its most senior civil servant. He previously headed the UK’s Department for International Development, where he played a key role in developing the UK’s successful Know-How Fund for Central and Eastern Europe and worked with the European Commission to improve its programmes in the Middle East and North Africa. He also served in the Cabinet Office in the 2000s, creating the central Performance and Innovation Unit to coordinate work on long-term issues that cross public sector institutional boundaries. Before that, he worked in the UK Treasury and in Botswana on an Overseas Development Institute fellowship.