CGD Europe Board of Trustees

Rachel Glennerster

President, Center for Global Development, [email protected]

Rachel Glennerster is the president of the Center for Global Development. Prior to joining CGD, she was an Associate Professor of Economics in the Division of Social Science at the University of Chicago. She uses randomized trials to study democracy and accountability, health, education, microfinance, and women’s empowerment mainly in West Africa and South Asia. She has also written on strategies to stimulate innovation, promoting more equitable access to vaccines, and the response to Ebola and COVID-19 pandemics.

Dr. Glennerster joined the University of Chicago community after serving as Chief Economist at the Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and the Department for International Development in the UK. From 2004 to 2017, she served as Executive Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) a center in the Economics Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which seeks to reduce poverty by ensuring policy is informed by scientific evidence and helped pioneer the use of randomized trials in development economics.

Dr. Glennerster helped to establish “Deworm the World”, which has helped provide 1 billion deworming treatments to children worldwide. Her books include Strong Medicine: Creating Incentives for Pharmaceutical Research on Neglected Diseases (with Michael Kremer) and Running Randomized Evaluations: A Practical Guide, (with Kuzai Takavarasha).

In 2021, Dr. Glennerster was appointed Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG) for services in international development. She currently serves as the Chair of Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL), a development organization that utilizes evidence-backed educational approaches to help children develop basic reading and mathematical skills.

Caroline Atkinson

Caroline Atkinson is an international economics and finance expert, with a long career in policy making, in the White House, the US National Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, the Bank of England and the US Treasury.

Caroline is presently Senior Global Strategist with the Rock Creek group, a DC-based asset management company. Before that, she was Global Head of Policy for Google, where she advised Google’s leadership on policy issues and led Google’s work with policy makers, government officials, and key political stakeholders.

Prior to joining Google, Caroline served as President Barack Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics. As the President’s senior international economic advisor, Caroline supported the President at major international economic summits and coordinated the policymaking process for international economic affairs. During her tenure, she was the US “sherpa” at G7 and G20 summits, and helped to drive global agreement on a diverse set of issues, including global trade, employment, climate change and the response to the Ebola crisis.

Before working directly for President Obama, Caroline held senior roles at the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Treasury Department, and the Bank of England, and worked as a journalist for The Washington Post, The Economist, and The Times of London. She holds a B.A. in politics, philosophy and economics (PPE) from Oxford University.

Tamsyn Barton

Tamsyn Barton has been since January 2019 the Chief Commissioner of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, the aid watchdog, responsible for scrutiny of UK official development assistance, reporting to Parliament. Prior to this, she was CEO of Bond (International Development NGOs’ umbrella group). Previously she represented the European Investment Bank on the Board of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, following her role at EIB as Director-General, Lending Operations Outside the EU and Candidate Countries.

After a brief academic career which involved publication of two books and a number of articles in the field of ancient history, she moved into international development in 1993, and worked for NGOs and for the British Government in India and the UK in a range of policy and programme management roles before joining EIB in 2010. She is currently on the Board of the Institute for Development Studies, Sussex. She was from 2015 to 2019 a Trustee of the School of Oriental and African Studies and was also a member of the Oxford University Humanities Advisory Board.

Lindy Cameron

Lindy Cameron became CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre in October 2020 following more than two decades of national security policy and crisis management experience. She was previously a Director-General in the Northern Ireland Office and at the Department for International Development (DFID). After starting her career in the private sector, Lindy served across government both at home and abroad, including postings in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Shaila Khan Leekha

Shaila Khan Leekha spent 17 years in the private and public sectors, including investment banking in NY and infrastructure investing at the IFC and GE Capital, followed by a senior role at DfID. There, she oversaw £2.5bn of the UK's aid budget, devising and achieving strategic outcomes in negotiations for the World Bank (WB) and CDC, DfIDs £5bn balance sheet PE fund. She led CDC’s Board, and managed 80+ staff with 7 direct reports including UK board members at the WB and EBRD.  Together with HM Treasury, she also helped devise and negotiate returnable capital instruments for some of DfIDs private sector investments. 

Ellen Mackenzie

Chief Financial Officer, Center for Global Development, [email protected]

Ellen Mackenzie is chief financial officer and director for operations at the Center for global Development. Mackenzie directs all of the organization’s administrative, accounting, budgeting, human resource, and information technology efforts. Before joining CGD in 2007, Mackenzie was the director of finance and operations at the Global Fund for Children. She has more than 15 years of experience working with nonprofit organizations.