Contributors
Authors & thought leaders
The people behind World Data Lab Impact's analysis, data products and global development stories.
Anna Kiknadze
Thought Leadership Lead, World Data Lab
Anna Kiknadze is the thought leadership lead at World Data Lab. She holds a master's degree in Sociology from the University of Amsterdam, and a degree in Politics, Rights, and Development from New York University.
Haroon Bhorat
Director, Development Policy Research Unit, University of Cape Town
Haroon Bhorat is Professor of Economics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is also the Director of the Development Policy Research Unit (DPRU). He has his PhD in Economics through Stellenbosch University in South Africa. His research interests cover the areas of labour economics, poverty and income distribution and is the current recipient of a highly prestigious national Research Chair under the theme of Economic Growth, Poverty and Inequality: Exploring the Interactions for South Africa. He has co-authored two books on labour market and poverty issues in South Africa, and has published widely in academic journals. He has undertaken extensive work for numerous South African government departments, most notably the South African Department of Labour, the Presidency and the National Treasury. He has served on a number of government research advisory panels and consults regularly with international organizations such as the ILO, World Bank and the UNDP. Haroon Bhorat is the Minister of Labour's appointee on the Employment Conditions Commission (ECC) – the country's minimum wage setting body. Professor Bhorat served as an economic advisor to Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe, formally serving on the Presidential Economic Advisory Panel. He is currently an economic advisor to the Minister of Economic Development.
Homi Kharas
Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution; Co-founder, World Data Lab
Homi Kharas is a Senior Fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution, and co-founder of World Data Lab. An economist by training, Kharas is a pioneer in the study of the global middle class. He has over four decades of experience working in or writing about international financial institutions and contributed to the shaping of the U.N.-brokered global agreement in 2015 to pursue Sustainable Development Goals in every country and region of the world. In "The Rise of the Global Middle Class: How the Search for the Good Life Can Change the World" (Brookings, 2023) Kharas examines the history of the middle class from Victorian England to modern day China and India. Indeed, here Kharas reflects on why joining the middle class is such a powerful dream for so many people, while highlighting the threats now emerging as the sheer scale of middle-class consumerism runs up against planetary boundaries.
Ivy Nyayieka
Contributing writer, World Data Lab
Interested in analysis of tech & business data to identify trends. Yale '17. Columbia '23. Work appears in Tampa Bay Times, CNN, The Economist, Huffpost, Miami Herald, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Business Daily among others.
Jesús Crespo Cuaresma
Professor of Economics, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business
Jesús Crespo Cuaresma is professor of economics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), director of economic analysis at the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (WIC), as well as research scholar at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). He led the project Converting Geospatial Observations Into Socioeconomic Data.
Reshma Sheoraj
Vice President of Strategic Engagements, World Data Lab
Dr. Reshma Sheoraj is an experienced economist, policymaker, and director with a demonstrated history of working with the public, private sector and development finance institutions. She is currently the Vice President of Strategic Engagements at World Data Lab (WDL) where she is responsible for scaling up its impact business and building out the strategic engagements with WDL's partners and clients. She has oversight over the Africa Operations team and expansion of WDL's Global business.
Sourav Suman
Data Lead, World Data Lab
Sourav Suman is data lead at World Data Lab, working on income and consumption distributions and the measurement of global inequality.
Wolfgang Fengler
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, World Data Lab
Wolfgang Fengler is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of World Data Lab. He spoke at TEDx Vienna and launched population.io (endorsed by Bill Gates) as well as worldpoverty.io, two real-time big data models. The German weekly DER SPIEGEL called him a "big data virtuoso". Previously, he served as the World Bank's Lead Economist in the Nairobi office. A native German, Wolfgang has been previously a staff member of the World Bank for more than 20 years, during which he lived in four continents: First in North America working at the World Bank's headquarters in Washington DC, then in Asia as a Senior Economist in the Indonesia office, followed by Africa, and finally in Europe as part of the World Bank's new hub in Vienna. Wolfgang has published extensively on social and economic issues. He also co-authored "Delivering Aid Differently" (with Homi Kharas, Brookings) and "Africa's Economic Boom" (with Shanta Devarajan, Foreign Affairs). Prior to joining the World Bank, he set up Africa Consulting, LLC, and was a Fellow at the Research Institute for International Relations. Wolfgang gained a PhD from the University of Hamburg (Germany).