Benita Ainabe is a Financial Sector Specialist (Capital Markets) in the Public Management, Financial Sector, and Trade Division of the Southeast Asia Department at Asian Development Bank. She specializes in financial sector development, capital markets, innovative financing mechanisms, and regulatory governance and reforms in ADB’s developing member countries in Southeast Asia.

Noel is currently a staff-consultant (Procurement and Contract Management Specialist) at the Asian Development Bank. Aside from his over 30 years of extensive experience in the field of procurement (health, education, social welfare, climate change, irrigation / water, power, transport, mining, agriculture, local government finance, SME and environment) and project management, including about 20 years in the World Bank, he has considerable work on community driven development and citizen monitoring.

As a consultant on innovation and governance, Kaushal Jhalla works on cross institutional team to leverage technology and communities built around transparency, accountability and access to information. Before joining the World Bank in 2010, he was a Senior Business Analyst at Wells Fargo. He completed his MBA from California State University-East Bay.

Niño Raymond B. Alvina is the executive director of the Bureau of Local Government Finance, an attached agency of the Department of Finance of the Philippines, which oversees revenue operations of local governments. He supervises and coordinates all treasury and assessment operations of local governments. Before that, he was director of Local Government Units Operations Service where he was in charge of local treasury and assessment operations, capacity building, and special projects of the bureau.

Kelly Bird is the Country Director for the Philippines, appointed to the position in January 2018. Prior to this assignment, he was Director of the Public Management, Financial Sector and Trade Division in the Southeast Asia Department of the Asian Development Bank. He joined ADB in June 2006 and specializes in regulatory governance and reforms, financial sector development, trade and investment policy, and employment policy, among others.

Abigail has more than 16 years of in-depth experience in internal auditing; from setting up an internal audit function, to internal audit outsourcing and co-sourcing, to conducting external quality assessment reviews of internal audit functions of clients.

She is active in professional organizations such as The Institute of Internal Auditors Philippines (IIA-Philippines) and the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners Philippines (ACFE-Phils). She was the 2020 Chairman of the Board of Trustees and President of the IIA-Philippines.