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Betty N. Wainaina

  • Associate Director, Multilateral Reform

Betty N. Wainaina is an Associate Director, Multilateral Reform at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, working on the Prevention and Peacebuilding and Multilateral Reform programs.

Betty is a social development specialist, with 18+ years of diverse experience in the development sector, working in several countries including Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Malawi, and Ghana, amongst others. She has designed programs aimed at promoting institutional strengthening and deepening governance arrangements including working with executive branches of government, legislatures, local authorities, as well as civil society.

Her previous roles have been with the World Bank as an economist in the Kenya, Somalia, and Comoros country programmes respectively. She later joined the Global Centre for Conflict Security and Development, which sought to deepen and advance the community of practice within the World Bank on issues affecting fragile and conflict affected states. In this role, she supported the engagement of the World Bank at both global and country level with the g7+ Secretariat and the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and State Building, in operationalizing the New Deal for engagement in fragile states. She has also worked for the Heinrich Boell Stiftung and has served as a consultant for various United Nations agencies and other international development organisations.

Betty has a passion for governance issues and addressing institutional arrangements and capacities that compromise development. In addition, she is a champion for gender equality and particularly the advancement of women and girls.

She possesses a Masters degree in Environmental Economics from the University of Kent in the UK, and a first degree in Environmental Planning and Management from Kenyatta University in Kenya.

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