Navigating Challenges for Sustainable Growth

Suman Bery is currently Vice Chairperson, NITI Aayog, in the rank and status of a Cabinet Minister. An experienced policy economist and research administrator, Mr Bery took over as NITI Aayog Vice Chairperson from 1 May 2022. At the time of his appointment, Mr Bery was a Global Fellow in the Asia Programme of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington D.C. and a non-resident fellow at Bruegel, an economic policy research institution in Brussels. He was also a member of the Board of the Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation, New Delhi. From early 2012 till mid-2016, Mr Bery was Royal Dutch Shell's global Chief Economist based in The Hague. In this capacity, he advised the board and management on global economic and political developments. He was also part of the senior leadership of Shell's global scenarios group. During his time at Shell, he led a collaborative project with Indian think tanks (later published) to apply scenario modeling to India's energy sector.

Kapil Kapoor is the Regional Director for the Asia Regional Office of the IDRC. Kapil has over 30 years' experience in international development, specializing in Africa and Asia. He was the Director General for Southern Africa, at the African Development Bank, where he was responsible for the Bank's projects and programs across 13 countries in Southern Africa. He has also served as the Director for Strategy and Operational Policies at the Bank, where he led the preparation of the Bank's Long-Term Strategy for Africa, and the Bank's Private Sector Development Strategy. Kapil has held a series of senior positions with the World Bank Group, including the World Bank's Representative for Uganda and Zambia and the World Bank's Sector Manager for its poverty reduction, economic management and governance program in Asia. Kapil holds a PhD degree in
Economics and an MBA degree in Finance.

Professor Jean-Louis Arcand, a Canadian citizen born in the Cameroon, is the President of GDN, professor of economics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, as well as an affiliate professor at the Université Mohammed VI Polytechnic in Rabat. He is a Founding Fellow of the European Development Research Network (EUDN), a Senior Fellow at the Fondation pour les études et recherches en développement international (FERDI) and has been a Visiting Professor at Renmin University of China in Beijing, Universidade Federal da Bahia and several universities in Africa and the Caribbean. He was assistant and then Associate Professor at the University of Montréal, and Professor at the Centre d'études et de recherches en développement international (CERDI). Jean-Louis holds a PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an MPhil from Cambridge University and a BA (high honors) from Swarthmore College.