Jessica Espinoza is Vice President for Private Equity and Venture Capital Investments at DEG, the German Development Finance Institution (KfW Group) and the Chair of the 2X Challenge, a global initiative that has mobilized over $11 billion of gender lens investments since its launch at the G7 Summit in 2018.
Jessica serves on the Board of Directors of AlphaMundi Foundation and of the Mexican financial institution Mega as well as on the Advisory Board of several private equity funds. As a mentor for Endeavor, she supports high impact companies as they scale up. Jessica is the Founder of XOCO, an edtech venture empowering adolescent girls in the Global South and a fellow at Columbia eLab.
She is a PhD candidate at University of Siegen, researching the transformative potential of gender lens investing. Prior to joining DEG, Jessica was a Member of the Management Board at ProCredit Bank Nicaragua and part of the Group Funding team at ProCredit Holding. She managed the Africa Regional Office of MicroFinance Transparency in Ghana and led a flagship program to promote responsible finance across Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.
Eduardo José Espinoza Valverde is Director General of Economic Integration, Trade Facilitation, and Transport at Secretariat for Central American Economic Integration (SIECA).
He is an Economist specialized in economic development, public policies, commercial intelligence, strategic analysis, trade policy, regional integration, and foreign trade. He has extensive experience in trade negotiations, economic research, and project management at the regional level.
He has held various positions at SIECA, including Director of the Center for Economic Integration Studies (2016-2021), Director of Economic Intelligence (2014-2016), and Macroeconomic Analyst (2013-2014). Additionally, he has worked as an Economic Consultant at the Executive Secretariat of the Central American Monetary Council (SECMCA).
Eduardo holds a Master's degree in Strategic Studies from Rafael Landivar University, a specialization in Public Policies from the same university, and a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the National University of Costa Rica (summa cum laude)
Valeria Esquivel is Employment Policies and Gender Specialist at the International Labour Office, based in Geneva. Her latest publications have focused primarily on care policies and care workers. She has co-authored the reports Innovations in Care: New Concepts, New Actors, New Policies (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2017) and Care work and care jobs for the future of decent work (ILO, 2018). She has also co-edited two Gender and Development issues, the first devoted to the Sustainable Development Goals (Vol. 24, No. 1, 2016) and the other to Beijing +25 (Vol.28, No. 2, 2020). Her latest research focuses on the intersections of gender, employment and macroeconomics. She is currently studying the gender employment impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the aim at proposing and supporting the implementation of gender-responsive employment policies.
Valeria is member of the Board of IAFFE (International Association for Feminist Economics), is Associate Editor for Feminist Economics and is member of the Editorial Advisory Group of Gender and Development.
Miguel Esteban is a Professor at the Research Institute of Sustainable Future Society, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Waseda University, in Tokyo, Japan.
He received his PhD in Coastal Engineering from Yokohama National University in Japan in 2007, and then continued with Post-Doctoral Fellowships at the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS) and Kyoto University. Miguel also worked as an Associate Professor at Waseda University and The University of Tokyo.
He has authored over 150 journal papers. Miguel's research deals with the effect of natural disasters on various components of the socio-economic make-up of different countries, in particular tropical cyclones, which are expected to increase in intensity in the future. This, coupled with sea-level rise, is expected to have a great impact on the economy of many countries; his research attempts to quantify the economic damage that this can cause to transport, infrastructure and agriculture.
Jandee Eum is an experienced regulatory expert currently serving as Director of the Business Group Regulation Division at the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) since 2025.
With a distinguished career spanning key leadership roles in digital investigation, e-commerce, labor relations, and legal counsel divisions, she has played a pivotal role in shaping Korea’s competition and fair trade policies.
She holds a Master’s degree in International Development Policy from Duke University and advanced degrees in Public Administration and Asian History from Seoul National University.
Her international experience includes a fellowship at the Global Antitrust Institute at George Mason University, reflecting her commitment to advancing global antitrust cooperation and regulatory excellence.
Dr Karen Evans leads the Ocean Science section of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO.
The section coordinates and leads the generation of ocean science knowledge and tools across the thematic areas of climate change, including ocean acidification, deoxygenation, carbon cycles and blue carbon, pollution and pest species including harmful algal blooms and ship fouling. It also coordinates and supports national reporting against a number of Sustainable Development Goal 14 indicators and multi-lateral processes including the Paris Agreement.
Karen is a marine ecologist by training with over 20 years of experience in building scientific understanding of marine resources and achieving effective ocean management, particularly in relation to domestic and international fisheries, offshore wind energy development and threatened, endangered and protected species.
She has led international teams in the coordination of global ocean observation systems for biology and ecosystems and delivery of global assessments of the marine environment on behalf of the UN.
Simon J. Evenett is Professor of Geopolitics and Strategy at International Institute for Management Development (IMD), Lausanne. He founded the St Gallen Endowment for Prosperity Through Trade (SGEPT), which hosts three leading independent commercial policy monitoring initiatives: the Global Trade Alert, a key resource for trade monitoring and assessing trade tensions, the New Industrial Policy Observatory, and the Digital Policy Alert.
His research focuses on geopolitical rivalry, international trade policy, protectionism, industrial policy, business-government relations, trade negotiations and agreements, and the WTO. Evenett draws out the implications of these developments for executives, corporate strategy, and public policy. His work is cited in numerous fields, including international trade, international business, and international political economy/political science, and he has given over 650 presentations to private sector, public policy, and educational audiences.
Before joining IMD, Evenett was a Professor of International Trade and Economic Development at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, where he served as the Academic Director of the St Gallen MBA for over a decade. Previously he taught at Oxford University and held fellowships at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC. Evenett has been a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Johns Hopkins University twice and was Visiting Professor of Corporate Strategy at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business three times.
In 2023, he was appointed Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Trade and Investment.
Ms. Vermaran Extavour has served at the FAO Sub-regional office for the Caribbean since 2015 serving the region through projects aimed at the development of the Roots and Tubers value chains in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Activities under these projects, included market development strategies for new and innovative products and collaboration with the private sector in national and regional market expansion. The public private sector partnerships featured an integrated approach for development of root and tuber crops.
Currently Ms. Extavour is an international expert in value chains and project coordination in the sub-region and working with smallholder farmers and fisherfolk to strengthen their capacities along viable value chains while taking into account, gender, climate change and digital solutions in the sector.
Before joining FAO, Ms. Extavour worked as an agribusiness consultant with the Caribbean Agribusiness Association for 2 years as well as the agroprocessing and Project Manager for the Trinidad and Tobago Agribusiness Association. She also worked with IICA and CARDI supporting the development of smallholders in the agriculture sector.
Her formal training has been completed in the areas of Human Ecology, Nutritional Sciences, Food Technology, Business Administration and Project Management.
Daniel Fadelle is the Co-Founder of CheckWI.com, and a Merchant Success Manager at Shopify. A Dominican national born in Toronto, Canada who holds a Bachelor of Social Science from the University of Ottawa, Graduate Certification in Project Management from Humber College and studied eCommerce and Online Business Management at the University of Toronto. Prior to his current positions, Daniel spent over 4 years in South Korea as a teacher, program coordinator, traveller and event planner. He is passionate about entrepreneurship, technology and education.