A global roundtable on decentralization and multilevel governance

Bishnu Adhikari is governance director for The Asia Foundation in Nepal, with over 20 years of experience in the field of local governance, federalism and civil society as an adviser, and university lecturer.
Since 2018, Bishnu has been leading TAF’s Subnational Governance Program that works to create enabling conditions for effective and accountable local governments in Nepal. Prior to this, Bishnu was deputy team leader of the Economic Policy Incubator, a research and public policy project of DFID Nepal to support sub-national economic growth. From 2013-16, Bishnu was Governance Adviser to DFID Nepal following from his role as the Strategy and Governance Adviser to DFID/Nepal’s civil society program Enabling State Program (2011 to 2013). Bishnu served for a decade (2000-2010) with USAID/Nepal advising on Democracy and Governance issues. From 1996-2000 Bishnu led high profile research projects on political developments, refugees and decentralization in Nepal as a lecturer of political science at the Center for Nepal and Asian Studies at Tribhuvan University.
Bishnu holds a master’s degree in Political Science from Tribhuvan University, and was a Democracy, Development and Rule of Law Fellow at Stanford University.

Dr. Titilola Akindeinde has over 20 years of experience in Economic Policy and Strategy in the UK and Nigeria. She has a proven track record as a UK government economist, a consultant providing technical support to the Government of Nigeria, and as Team Leader/Programme Manager implementing FCDO funded Policy Development Facility (PDF) programmes, where she demonstrated success in leadership, programme management, strategic thinking and engagement, analytical decision making, economic analysis, and policy and strategy development. She has led teams and consultants in economic and governmental interventions and communicated the results effectively to various stakeholders and audiences. Dr. Akindeinde has a highly developed political awareness, understanding of economic policies and growth, and wide-reaching networks through her experience working at a high level within government. This awareness underscores her ability to use political judgement and sensitivity in managing relationships with senior government and private sector actors as evidenced in her leadership of PDF.

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Alexander Bastianen (PhD) is a researcher specialized in local government studies and comparative public administration, based in Lausanne, Switzerland. He obtained his PhD from the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP) of the University of Lausanne. He has led the Local Autonomy Index 2.0 project, developing an updated and extended version of the acclaimed indicator of decentralization at the local level, currently covering 57 countries from 1990-2020. He was also in charge of the most recent Swiss Municipal Monitoring survey (2023). His research has been widely published in the form of successful peer-reviewed journal articles and edited books, including the recent volume “Dynamics and Issues of Local Autonomy – A Comparative Study”. This research has served as a basis for a variety of reports and policy recommendations, notably by organizations such the European Commission and the OECD.

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Eugenie L Birch, FAICP, is the Lawrence C. Nussdorf Professor of Urban Research, co-Director, Penn Institute for Urban Research and co-Editor, Penn Press’s City in the 21st Century series at the University of Pennsylvania. Her latest publications include Urban Sustainable Development, Governance, Finance, and Politics, Rio de Janeiro: Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI), 2024 (edited with Pedro Vormitagg and Mariana Albuquerque) and Harnessing Urban Innovation to Unlock the Sustainable Development Goals, Singapore: Springer 2024 (edited with Ali Cheshmehzangi, Nicholas You and Jose Siri). She is co-chair, Secretariat, SDSN Global Commission on Urban SDG Finance. She holds a master and PHD degree in Urban Planning, Columbia University.

Dr. Jamie Boex is the Executive Director of the Local Public Sector Alliance. Jamie is a public finance economist with extensive experience in fiscal decentralization, multilevel governance and public sector finance reforms in developing and transition countries around the world. As a scholar-practitioner, Jamie has worked with numerous governments and global development organizations, including the World Bank, UNDP, and various bilateral development agencies. Over the past 25 year, Jamie has actively contributed to policy reforms in over twenty-five developing and transition countries around the world.

Prof. Andrew Boraine is an independent partnering and relational governance practitioner. He has been involved in South Africa’s political, local government, urban, economic, and sustainability change processes for the past four decades as a student leader, anti-apartheid activist, negotiator, government planner, city manager, chief executive, partnering specialist, place-maker, institutional designer, and leadership coach.

In 1995, Andrew was appointed DDG in the Department of Constitutional Development. In this capacity, he assisted with the drafting of the local government and cooperative governance chapters in the 1996 South African constitution and convened the White Paper on Local Government process in 1997. Thereafter, Andrew was appointed City Manager of the City of Cape Town and served in this role until 2001. In 2002, he was appointed Special Advisor to the Minister of Provincial and Local Government, where he conceptualized and convened the South African Cities Network (SACN). Andrew is currently part of the team that is reviewing the White Paper on Local Government in South Africa.

Charles ‘Chas’ Cadwell is an Institute fellow in Housing and Communities Division at the Urban Institute. From 2007 to 2019, he led Urban’s Center on International Development and Governance. An international development expert and lawyer with 30 years’ experience in economic reform, research oversight, and nonprofit leadership, Cadwell’s work focuses on governance reform, aid effectiveness, and the production and application of policy research to real-world development problems. At Urban, this focus has been applied to local government effectiveness and inclusiveness. Current projects address reform of intergovernmental fiscal and administrative systems in Moldova and Kenya. He has worked recently on smart cities in Asia, analysis of constitution implementation in Nepal, and health reform in Ukraine. Cadwell is also a founding board member of the Local Public Sector Alliance (a global community of practice) and the Center for Values in International Development (ethics in development). Earlier, Cadwell worked in the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, in the Office of Advocacy at the US Small Business Administration, in private law practice, and in the export information business. From 1990 to 2006, Cadwell was director of the IRIS Center in the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland. Cadwell is a graduate of Yale College and the National Law Center at the George Washington University. He has been an adjunct professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.

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Professor Jaap de Visser has been involved with the Dullah Omar Institute in Cape Town, South Africa, since 1998, including serving as the Institute’s director from 2013 to 2022. He is a Professor of Law at the University of the Western Cape’s Faculty of Law and the South African National Research Foundation’s National Chair in Multilevel Government. His research, teaching and consulting focuses on multilevel government, local government, good governance and federalism in the so-called Global South, and he has published widely on these topics.
He believes that decentralisation, provided it is implemented genuinely and adequately, holds great promise for pursuing development, for building democracy and peace, and for managing ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious diversity. He co-curator of Local Government Law of South Africa, a textbook on the legal framework for local government. He is also co-editor of the Local Government Bulletin, a quarterly newsletter on local government in South Africa. Prof De Visser is co-convenor of a Masters Multilevel Government, a Postgraduate Diploma on local government and the annual African School on Decentralisation.
Prof De Visser has consulted for many national and international organisations, including the World Bank, UNHABITAT, USAID, Forum of Federations, GIZ, South Africa’s Department of Cooperative Government, the City of Cape Town, the Western Cape government, and many local authorities in South Africa. He is rated by South Africa’s National Research Foundation as a B-2 scholar with “considerable international recognition for the high quality and impact of his/her recent research outputs”. He has written/edited eight books, produced 21 journal articles, 28 chapters in books, supervised ten doctorates and 27 masters theses. His work has been cited by courts in South Africa and abroad, including six Constitutional Court judgments. Prof De Visser is Vice-President of the International Association of Centers for Federal Studies (IACFS). In 2025, he was selected as one of the Top 25 Thinkers in Local Government by the LGIU (Local Government Information Unit, UK). He is also Co-Chair of the Local Public Service Alliance Expert Group on Sub-Saharan Africa.

Lewis Dijkstra leads a team doing Urban and Rural Analysis at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. He is a Visiting Professor in practice at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His work focusses on urbanisation, demography, decentralisation and Euroscepticism. He holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from Rutgers University.

Lennart works in the Planning Finance and Economy Section of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme as a Programme Management Officer and agency lead on Local Finance. He is based at the UN-Habitat headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. Lennart has provided technical assistance on Local Finance issues to local governments in over 20 developing countries and has developed the Rapid Own Source Revenue Analysis (ROSRA) approach as well as the Local Finance Framework. Lennart holds a Masters in Public Financial Management from SOAS and an MSc with Distinction in Development Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Ms. Claire Frost is Head of Programmes at the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF). She has 20 years of experience working with local government at the local, national and international level. Claire is based at CLGF Headquarters in London (UK) and works extensively with CLGF’s regional teams in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific. She coordinates CLGF’s portfolio of projects and has extensive experience in inter-governmental relations, local economic development, climate resilience, sustainable urbanization, localizing the SDGs, social inclusion and addressing inequalities. She supports the coordination of the Commonwealth Women in Local Government Network (ComWLG) and the Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Network (CSCN). She is CLGF’s operational lead on the relationship with the European Union both in the coordination and implementation of the CLGF Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) and as the representative to the Policy Forum for Development (PFD) and PLATFORMA. She has a Masters degree in urban planning and a BA in communications.

Ms. Gertrude Rose Gamwera Buyinga, a qualified professional Lawyer and Chief Executive, is the Secretary General for East African County and Local Governments Association (EACLGA), whose headquarters are in based in Arusha City in the United Republic of Tanzania. Ms. Gamwera Buyinga has over Twenty-Five (25) Year’s working experience in Local Governance and the Public Sector Management space, and her experiences embody her unique strength in navigating and establishing strong Local, National, Regional and Global partnerships for Local Development. Ms. Gamwera Buyinga is also the Coordinator for the Commonwealth Local Government Forum Office for East Africa and has served as Head of Hub for the Strong Cities Network Eastern and Southern Africa Region, both also hosted by EACLGA. She is a member of the Policy Forum for Development, as a representative from the Africa Region, an active member of the Local Public Sector Alliance, Sub Saharan Region, and serves on the Regional Executive Committee for ICLEI Africa where she is an Advisor to the Board. Ms Gamwera is actively engaged in supporting Local Governments to strategically position themselves for the SDGs Localization Agenda, the Urban and Resilient Cities Agenda, as well as advocating for stronger linkages between the Subnational Local and County Governments with the East African Community Regional Bloc, to ensure that there is an effective decentralized driven EAC Regional Integration agenda. As active Local Government advocate, Ms. Gamwera Buyinga has been profiled as Speaker and representative in various Global for a including the UN General Assembly, the African Union, as well as annual convening of Assemblies of Networks like United Cities and Local Government Global, ICLEI, and the Strong Cities Network.

Amy Gill is the Global Lead, Local Action for UNDP with over 20 years’ experience in policy development and the design and management of local governance, peacebuilding and recovery programmes. She has focused on service delivery, decentralization, federalism and strengthening state-society relation. In particular, Amy has provided policy and programming advice to strengthen local governmental institutions, non-governmental organisations, and civil society in fragile and crisis settings.

Hemanthi is the Chief Executive Officer of the Federation of Sri Lankan Local Govt. Authorities, the national association for Local Govt in Sri Lanka. She has worked as a development practitioner for more than 20 years. Hemanthi is a life member of Sri Lanka Association for Advancement of Science and holds Masters Degree in Development Studies and Public Policy from University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Astrid is an independent feminist urban economist, based in Hong Kong, working across research and practice, supporting cities with questions of strategy and governance related to financing and funding public infrastructure and services. Astrid currently has appointments as the Chair of the Board of the Mawazo Institute, as a Research Associate at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town and ODI as well as a Fellow at the African Urban Lab, African School of Economics. She is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Oxford looking at the intersection of infrastructure finance and gender. For more information, please see: www.urbanasti.com

David Jackson is a Non-Resident Fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation (CIC). He is recognized as a thought leader in local government finance with over 30 years of experience as an economist and urbanist. From 2013 to 2024, he directed UNCDF’s Local Development Finance Practice at a global level, initiating the Malaga Coalition for municipal finance, the International Municipal Investment Fund (now managed by Meridiam), and innovating city guarantee facilities and local capital market reforms for local government bonds.

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CPA Kithinji Kiragu has had a distinguished career, culminating in his appointment as the Chairperson of the Inter-Governmental Relations Technical Committee (IGRTC) by former President Uhuru Kenyatta CGH on March 31, 2022. He has a solid educational foundation, with a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Nairobi and an MBA from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Additionally, he is a Certified Public Accountant in Kenya. Over the last thirty years, Mr. Kiragu has been extensively involved as a consultant and adviser to governments and development partners, including the World Bank and UK-DFID. His expertise spans institutional and political economy analysis, organizational and human resources development, public finance management, and governance. Notably, he served as the Chief Technical Adviser for Public Sector Reforms for the Government of Tanzania from 1995 to 1998, and as Strategy Adviser for the reform of Nigeria’s Federal Public Service in 2009-2010. He has also published extensively on topics related to public sector management, political economy, and governance.

Gundula Löffler is a research fellow at ODI Global, where she specialises in institutional and governance reforms in developing countries in the areas of decentralization, local/urban finance and taxation. She is particularly interested in the political economy dynamics underlying these reforms. Prior to joining ODI Global, Gundula worked as a researcher and consultant on fiscal decentralisation and local taxation in Rwanda and other African countries. She also worked as a development adviser for the Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) in Egypt, Syria and Germany on participatory development, decentralisation, urban management and slum upgrading. Gundula holds a Ph.D. in Public Administration and Development from NYU Wagner. She also has master’s degrees in Public Policy and Management from the University of Konstanz, and in Cities and Regional Studies from Rutgers University.

Christine Martell is a professor at University of Colorado Denver School of Public Affairs, where she focuses on issues of public finance and policy. Her teaching and research interests include debt policy issues, fiscal federalism, tax and expenditure limitations, tax increment financing, international development and the development of municipal credit markets in developing countries. She has worked in the United States, Brazil, Georgia, Taiwan and Jordan. Dr. Martell is the recipient of the Jesse Burkhead Award as well as Excellence in Service and Excellence in Teaching awards.

Kelly M. McMann is the Lucy Adams Leffingwell Professor in the Department of Political Science at Case Western Reserve University in the United States. Her research has focused on local democracy, democracy’s tangible benefits, democratization, corruption, and economic reform. She is the project manager for subnational government for Varieties of Democracy. She enjoys sharing her expertise with practitioners and has collaborated with International IDEA, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and Brazil’s Instituto Sivis, among other organizations. Her publications include the books Corruption as a Last Resort: Adapting to the Market in Central Asia (Cornell) and Economic Autonomy and Democracy: Hybrid Regimes in Russia and Kyrgyzstan (Cambridge)

Zephy Muhirwa is a Governance Adviser at FCDO/British High Commission Kigali Rwanda. My core job responsibilities are playing an advisory role on Public sector reforms including public financial management, tax and decentralization.

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Mr. Wilson Pere is a seasoned public servant with wide experience in the water sector and institutional development spanning over 20 years rising within the ranks of an assistant secretary with Public Service Commission, fund manager, National Constituency Development Fund to Managing Director of Narok Water and Sewerage Co. Limited. He is currently serving as a member of the Intergovernmental Relations Technical Committee where he chairs the sub-committee on Finance, Human Resource and Institutional Development. Mr. Pere has long experience in donor relations having dealt with donor funded projects in the water sector where he is credited with the successful implementation of the Water Services Trust projects, including the augmentation of water supply for Narok Town. He has also served in several boards including Kenya Water Services Providers Association where he was an executive committee member. Wilson holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Nairobi where he specialized in management science.

Mr. Daniel Platz currently serves as Chief of the Development Cooperation Forum Unit at FSDO, UN DESA and also coordinates technical assistance and capacity development work on infrastructure asset management for local and national governments. He has made key contributions to UN intergovernmental processes, research and analytics and technical assistance in support of the implementation of the UN Development Agenda, including the Sustainable Development Goals. He has published on issues of development corporation and development finance, municipal finance and infrastructure asset management. Mr. Platz holds a Ph.D. in Economics and an M.A. in Global Political Economy and Finance from The New School University. He received Bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Economics from Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany.

Wilson Prichard is Associate Professor of Global Affairs and Public Policy and of Political Science at the University of Toronto, Chair of the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI) and Research Fellow at the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD). He was previously founding Research Director, and then Executive Director, of the ICTD. His work focuses on the political economy of tax reform in lower-income countries, with a particular focus on strategies to support successful sub-national revenue collection in sub-Saharan Africa. He is the author of Taxation, Responsiveness and Accountability in Sub-Saharan Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Taxing Africa (Zed Books, 2018) named a Foreign Affairs best book of 2019, Innovations in Tax Compliance: Building Trust, Navigating Politics and Tailoring Reform (World Bank, 2022) and a variety of academic articles. He regularly engages with governments, donors and civil society about the design of tax reform programs, and how to strengthen links between revenue raising and public benefits, including having led the design and implementation of innovative and successful property tax reform programs in Sierra Leone, and supporting reform planning and design in more than a dozen other countries.

Axel Radics is the Principal Fiscal Management Specialist at the IDB in Washington D.C., specializing in fiscal decentralization and subnational governments. With over 25 years of experience in Latin America and the Caribbean, Axel has held various roles at the IDB, including Acting Fiscal Management Division Chief and Fiscal Management Specialist in Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, and the Office of Monitoring and Evaluation (OVE). Before joining the IDB, Axel coordinated a fiscal transparency program and an e-government initiative for Argentina’s national government and conducted fiscal research at CIPPEC and CEDI. He holds a B.A. and M.A. in Economics from Universidad de San Andrés, an MPP from Harvard School of Government, and a PhD in Public Policy from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Madhavi Rajadhyaksha is an experienced governance practitioner with 18 years of work experience across low and-middle income countries in South Asia, South East Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. She brings a strong commitment to decentralization and locally-led approaches to strengthening public institutions and civil society. She co-chairs the Asia Working Group of the Local Public Sector Alliance and works as an independent consultant based out of India advising leading philanthropies and organizations globally. She has held leadership positions in international development organizations; she was till recently a Senior Director and Head of the Governance Practice at Abt Global Britain and previously, Head of Portfolio, Public Sector Governance at Oxford Policy Management (OPM) where she designed, delivered, and evaluated large and complex governance and civil society programs. She has driven public reform in partnership with the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO), The World Bank, the Gates Foundation, The World Food Program and UNICEF among others. Madhavi holds an MSc in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, UK and a Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism from the Asian College of Journalism, India.

Dario Runtic is a senior advisor specializing in public finance, local governance, and policy advocacy. He currently serves as an Advisor at the Association of Cities in Croatia and holds the position of Special Advisor to the Minister at the Ministry of Finance, focusing on local government financing. His distinguished career includes collaboration with key international organizations such as the World Bank, OECD/SIGMA, and the Urban Institute. His technical expertise centers on participatory budgeting, fiscal equalization, income and property taxation, own-source revenue policy, and the design of digital systems for local revenue optimization and PFM. A frequent speaker and author on fiscal policy, Dario is dedicated to modernizing public administration through innovative, data-driven solutions and evidence-based policy.

Nives Kopajtich Škrlec has dedicated her entire professional career to local self-government, decentralization, electoral system, and territorial / regional organization. First as a Head of Department in the Ministry of Administration and Justice, and for more than 20 years in the national organization of Croatian cities, where she is the executive director. She is the author of numerous works, participates in international conferences, in numerous working groups for the development of laws related to local self-government, and continuously advocate for greater and stronger powers of cities, the fundamental organizational forms throughout history.

Dr. Enid Slack is the Director of the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance (IMFG) at the School of Cities at the University of Toronto. Enid has written extensively on property taxes, intergovernmental transfers, municipal fiscal health, metropolitan governance, and municipal infrastructure finance. She consults with governments and international agencies such as the Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank, UN Habitat, the Forum of Federations, and the International Growth Centre. Enid chairs the Advisory Board of Local Public Sector Alliance (LPSA), is a member of the Advisory Board of the International Property Tax Institute (IPTI), and is an Associate of the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI). In 2012, Enid was awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal for her work on cities.

Paul Smoke is Professor of Public Finance and Planning at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, Director of the Public and Nonprofit Master of Public Administration Program, and Acting Director of the NYU Center on International Cooperation. His policy and research interests include the political economy of public sector reform, especially fiscal decentralization and intergovernmental fiscal relations, as well as urban and regional development planning. He has published in numerous journals and has authored, edited, or contributed to several books on decentralization and local governance. He has worked in many countries, especially in Africa and Asia, and with a wide range of international development organizations.

Lawyer. Master in Political Science and Comparative Politics (LSE). PhD in Law (Leiden University). Full professor of public law (Universidad Católica del Norte, Chile). Member of the Board of the Centro de Estudios del Desarrollo (CED, Chile). Member of the multilevel governance network (UNED, Spain). Fellow of the Salzburg Global Program

Nick Travis is an independent researcher and consultant in the field of public finance. He works as a consultant for a wide range of international and local development institutions in support of efforts to improve service delivery through governance reform. He is currently supporting the LPSA Secretariat to roll out the Local Governance Institutions Comparative Assessment (LOGICA) framework and other core research activities.

Lucy is Secretary General of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF), working to support and strengthen effective local government across the 56 member states of the Commonwealth.

Dr. Smith is a research professor in the department of economics at the Universidad iberoamericana. She has over 20 years of experience researching, teaching and consulting in public finance and governance. Specializing in municipal debt and anti-corruption strategies in Latin America, she has held roles at the U.S. Department of State and served as a consultant for organizations like the World Bank, IDB and the OECD. She is based in Mexico City.

Elton Stafa is program director at NALAS in charge of public finance, fiscal decentralization and local development. His work at NALAS focuses on informed policymaking, institutional capacity-building at national and regional level, supporting intergovernmental dialogue, and fostering regional learning and exchange. Elton has an extensive experience in designing and implementing fiscal decentralization legislation, policies and reforms. He leads the NALAS Task Force on Fiscal Decentralization, is the editor of the annual NALAS Fiscal Decentralization Report for South-East Europe and coordinates the NALAS Regional Decentralization Observatory, a platform serving as knowledge and information hub for local government finance in South-East Europe. He has previously worked at the Ministry of Finance of Albania and as a fiscal decentralization expert for the EU, WB, IMF, ADA, SIDA, GIZ, SDC etc. Elton holds MSc. in European Economy and Business Law from the University of Rome Tor Vergata, has taught at the School of Economics of the University of Tirana and has authored a number of studies on fiscal decentralization and intergovernmental dialogue.

Giuseppe Tesoriere is a PhD economist and Economic Affairs Officer at the UN Economic Commission for Africa. With over 15 years of experience across 20 countries and more than 50 cities worldwide, he has worked extensively on economic development, economic geography, resilience, inequality and sustainable development. Before joining UNECA, he served as Senior Economist at the World Resources Institute and UN-Habitat. He has led major research initiatives and fieldwork in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, including joint studies with the Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and GIZ. His contributions include key UN flagship publications such as the UN Secretary-General’s reports on Culture and Sustainable Development, the Economic Report on Africa, and World Economic Situation and Prospects. The author of over 50 publications in peer-reviewed journals and UN technical reports, his work has been translated into French, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Italian. A frequent keynote speaker and guest lecturer at Global and Regional Forum, he also reviews for leading journals including PLOS ONE, Sustainable Development, International Social Science Journal, and the Journal of Economic Studies.

Serdar Yilmaz is the Practice Manager for the Public Finance and Procurement Unit at the World Bank. He has broad experience in the related areas of fiscal decentralization, public expenditure management, subnational governance, and governmental accountability. Throughout his twenty-five year tenure at the World Bank, he has provided technical assistance and contributed to policy reforms in low and middle-income countries in Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the Middle East and East Asia regions. In addition to his task management responsibilities, Serdar makes original contributions to the literature. Serdar holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Mason University.

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Hanspeter Wyss is a Policy Advisor on Democratization, Media, and Elections at the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), part of Switzerland’s Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, where he focuses on strengthening democratic processes and institutions, independent and reliable media, and supporting decentralization in partner countries. Before his current role, Hanspeter worked at the World Bank’s Migration and Remittances Unit (2013-2017), contributing to KNOMAD, and led SDC’s labor migration programs in the Middle East and North Africa (2017-2021), promoting fair migration governance and migrant protection. Earlier, he held various positions at SDC, including Focal Point for Multilateral Organizations and Management for Development Results, Program Manager for sustainable development negotiations, Deputy Head of the Swiss Cooperation Office in Benin, and Program Manager for institutional dialogue with the World Bank and IMF. Hanspeter holds a Master’s degree in Development Economics from the University of Zurich/Switzerland.

Janine Xavier-Cross is the Networks Manager at the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF), based in the CLGF Caribbean Office in Trinidad and Tobago. She leads delivery and coordination for CLGF’s Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Network and the Commonwealth Women in Local Government Network, and supports the Commonwealth Youth for Sustainable Urbanisation. Janine holds a BSc in Biological Sciences from King’s College London and an MSc in Spatial Planning from University College London. Her career spans the UK and Trinidad and Tobago across public, private and development contexts, with experience in urban and regional planning, research and policy development, and the design and management of complex, multi-stakeholder programmes. Her work consistently focuses on strengthening local governance, advancing inclusion, and accelerating sustainable development through decentralisation, poverty reduction, local economic development, and the localisation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Kelmend Zajazi is the Executive Director of NALAS, the Network of Associations of Local Authorities of South East Europe since 2007. Mr Zajazi is a member of the Council of Europe’s Independent Expert Group on European Charter of Local Self Governments. Previously, Mr. Zajazi managed USAID Local Government Reforms and Democracy Network Programs, served as an Advisor of the Minister of Health and worked with the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Office in North Macedonia. Zajazi is a Medical Doctor and holds a Masters degree in Public Policy and Management from the University of Pittsburgh

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