Ede Ijjasz has more than 30 years of senior technical and management experience at the World Bank, academia, and consulting. His expertise is in the areas of finance, infrastructure, global environment, sustainable development, cities, water resources, climate change, agriculture, blue economy, resilience, fragility and conflict, resettlement, PPPs, and ESG.
After 23 years with the World Bank, Mr. Ijjasz retired in 2020. In his career, he worked in more than 90 developing and emerging countries in all regions of the world – from fragile and conflict-affected countries to high middle-income countries. At the World Bank he was for responsible for a portfolio of about $80 billion of investments and close to 800 policy and advisory reports. He was regional director for sustainable development and infrastructure for Africa and Latin America, global senior director for the social, urban, rural and resilience technical practice, and manager of the China sustainable development and infrastructure program. He led teams of about 700 staff and more than 1,000 consultants located in 70 countries. He has been featured in several global media outlets such as CNN, Wall St. Journal, Time, The Economist, LA Times, and CNBC.
He is currently the CEO of Eigen Impact Consulting, a boutique consulting firm specialized in strategy, sustainability, evaluation, and leadership development, with offices in Washington, DC and Sydney.
He is currently editing a book on “Knowledge Management and Organizational Change” (forthcoming, Routledge Ed., 2022). The premise of this book is that knowledge management cannot be a back-room function of leading organizations. Rather, it is a powerful tool for comparative advantage and innovation. Leadership of global organizations should use knowledge management for a culture of creativity, client service, and transformation.
Mr. Ijjasz has a Ph.D. and a M.Sc. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has been a lecturer at the Environmental Science and Policy Program in Johns Hopkins University, and at the Public Policy Program in Tsinghua University in Beijing.