Jaehyang So is Senior Adviser to World Bank Group Senior Vice President, Mahmoud Mohieldin. Prior to this position, she was the World Bank Director of Trust Funds and Partnerships.
Björn Gillsäter, a Swedish national, is the Special Representative of the World Bank Group to the United Nations. His previous experience with the Bank dates back to 2001-2005 when he was a Senior Advisor to the Nordic-Baltic Executive Director - a member of the Bank’s Board of Directors.
Veronica Piatkov is an International Affairs Officer at the World Bank. Piatkov is advising the Special Representative of the World Bank Group (WBG) to the United Nations. She works closely with colleagues across the WBG and the UN to connect expertise, experience and perspectives of the two institutions.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal call to action to achieve a comprehensive agenda for the future, including ending poverty, protecting the planet and ensuring that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. The high ambition set by the SDGs requires a strong implementation framework through financing, data, new technology and partnerships. While financing is needed for large and path-changing investments in sustainable development projects at the country level, smaller and catalytic initiatives that can create critical windows of opportunity for the achievement of the SDGs are also important. Such initiatives help with early investment in larger projects, help exchange knowledge across countries and organisations, nurture innovation and provide access to new data or new analysis. Often, such targeted and strategic initiatives are not always eligible other forms of traditional development finance.