Caroline Kende-Robb

Caroline Kende-Robb (born May 23, 1963, Fleetwood, England) is the Executive Director of the Africa Progress Panel, a foundation chaired by Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations.

Kende-Robb was born in Fleetwood and grew up in Anchorsholme, a suburb of Blackpool, in the early sixties. Her mother Ann Robb was a school teacher and her father, Robert Laundry Thomas Robb, was a fighter pilot who flew Spitfires during the World War II. Kende-Robb is the sister of John Robb, a British music journalist, author, punk musician, and social commentator and Alastair Robb a British diplomat working in the field of health and social change.

Kende-Robb graduated from Liverpool University, where she earned a BA (Hons) in Geography, and completed a MSc in Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is married to Michael Kende and they have three daughters.

Prior to joining the Africa Progress Panel, Kende-Robb worked for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for 16 years in the regions of Europe and Central Asia, Africa, and East Asia and the Pacific regions. As a senior manager, at the World Bank, Kende-Robb implemented loans and grants and conducted policy research on a range of global issues including the links between macroeconomic policies and poverty outcomes, conflict and fragility, climate change, social justice, and financial crises.

Kende-Robb was the first Poverty and Social Development Advisor recruited by the International Monetary Fund. In this role she managed the introduction of a poverty and social perspective to their macroeconomic programs and policy dialogue.

Kende-Robb began her career in 1983 where she spent five years as a manager in the private sector. From 1989–1993, she lived in The Gambia, where she worked for the European Union and The Gambian Government as a Business and Community Development Advisor for Voluntary Service Overseas. Based in Tanji, a small village, on the country’s Atlantic coast, Kende-Robb worked on an artisanal fisheries development project. She then became the West Africa Field Director for Africa Now, a civil society organization, and later joined the UNDP in The Gambia.

...
Wikipedia