Director of the Environment, Climate Gender, Youth, Nutrition and Social Inclusion Division (ECG) at IFAD
Member of the WLE Steering Committee
Jo Puri is the Director of the Environment, Climate Gender, Youth, Nutrition and Social Inclusion Division (ECG) at IFAD, and was previously Head of the Independent Evaluation Unit, Green Climate Fund in Korea and Head of Evaluation at the International Initiative of Impact Evaluation (3ie).
Dr. Puri is also adjunct associate professor at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Columbia University, New York where she teaches development evaluation. Jo has more than 24 years of experience in policy research and development evaluation and has worked in several organizations including the World Bank, Columbia University and the UN. Her dissertation related work was instrumental in identifying biases that creep into policy evaluation and specifically in environmental policy. In other research she has demonstrated and advocated for applications of economic theory and modelling with disaggregated data and measuring heterogeneous impacts. She has engaged on evaluation with UNDP, UNICEF, GEF and the MacArthur Foundation. She has examined and advised on evidence based climate change and environmental policy, advocacy for policy and behavior change, community based engagements for improving vaccine coverage, methods for rigorously evaluating effectiveness of humanitarian action, behavior change and climate change policies. Her research has focused on analyzing poverty impacts of policy and infrastructure investments in Asia and Latin America. Her other areas of work include examining impacts of policies in the areas of environment, agriculture, health and climate change. She was also a contributing author of UNEP’s green economy report. At UNEP she provided thematic and strategic advice on program development and engaging governments at various levels for effective delivery of outcomes for equitable, growth transitions. Jo’s academic qualifications include a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Resource Economics and a Masters in Development Economics. She is a reviewer for the Journal of Environment and Development, and for the Journal of Environment.