Private sector

Andrea is an architect with 10-year experience in sustainable infrastructure, green building standards, and project development. She has a master’s degree in Sustainable Infrastructure from the Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña (UPC) and possesses recognized international certifications in sustainability and climate change issues such as: EDGE Expert (Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies) by the International Finance Corporation (IFC)and as Climate Reality Leader for Latin America by Vice President Al Gore. She has a degree in Complex Project Management by the University of Cambridge. As an evaluation analyst in CABEI, she has carried out two reviews of the environmental and social standards of the Bank’s portfolio in a sampling of 62 initiatives for more than US$ 5,900 million for public and private sectors (road, mobility, housing, education, hospitals, health and COVID-19 responses, water and sanitation, renewable energy, agriculture, and financial institutions, among others) in 11 countries members of CABEI. She is a professor in the master’s degree for Renewable Energy Management at the Universidad Tecnológica Centroamericana (UNITEC) in Honduras.

Avril Benchimol is leading the blended finance initiative at the GEF. She has seventeen years of experience in capital markets and structured finance both in multilateral institutions and investment banking. At the GEF, she manages a blended finance portfolio of more than US$ 313 million in active projects. During her eight years of work at the Inter-American Development Bank, she designed and executed capital markets and structured finance transactions supporting SDGs. She also led a green microfinance facility in 11 countries that facilitated microfinance clients’ mitigation and adaptation initiatives. While at the GEF, the blended finance portfolio has grown to include new asset classes such as the Rhino Bond, Debt for Nature debt restructuring, de-risking green hydrogen facility or the securitization of biodiversity lending portfolio in the Amazon.
Prior to joining the IDB Group, she spent six years working in investment banking for Morgan Stanley and BNP Paribas in London, Madrid, and Brussels. Her main areas of expertise included capital markets and structured equity derivatives. In 2011, she received her Master of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University, where she graduated with honors. Avril is originally from Spain and currently lives in Washington, DC.

Jakub is the Chief of Independent Evaluation at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). Previously, he served as the Head of Ethics and Accountability at UNIDO, as Internal Auditor at the International Atomic Energy Agency, and held various oversight roles at Citibank in London, Lisbon, and Warsaw, including Director of Franchise Governance Internal Audit for Europe, Middle East, and Africa.
He holds a Master of Law degree and a diploma in Banking and Finance from Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS). He earned a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Bradford (UK) and Koźminski University (Warsaw, Poland). He completed the Executive Management Programme at the United Nations System Staff College in Torino, Italy. Jakub is currently enrolled in a Ph.D. programme in International Business at the Vienna University of Economics and Business.
He is a Chartered Internal Auditor (CMIIA), Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), and Certified Internal Auditor (CIA).

Serdar Bayryyev is a senior evaluation officer with FAO Office of Evaluation. He is an evaluation expert with more than 20 years of experience in development evaluation, results-based management, crisis prevention and recovery, governance and public sector management. Before joining FAO, he worked for UNDP, UNFPA and the World Bank Group. He has led complex evaluations of multi-sectoral interventions promoting climate action and sustainable development approaches, evaluations of conflict prevention, peacebuilding and crisis recovery interventions, and assessments of the UN efforts in partnering with non-state actors. He has been involved in formulation of the evaluation policies, design of the evaluation quality assurance systems and strategies for strengthening country-level evaluation capacities. He holds a masters’ degree in international economics from the Ukrainian Institute of International Relations and International Law.

Stephen Hutton is an evaluator with expertise on environment and climate change topics, and is the coordinator for IEG’s work stream on climate change and environmental sustainability. Stephen has conducted evaluations of World Bank activities in environment and environment-adjacent sectors since 2009, including major evaluations on enabling environment for climate action, disaster risk reduction, outcome orientation and the country level evaluation system, global convening power, environmental sustainability, results and performance of the World Bank Group, pollution abatement, and others; other evaluations on , climate change monitoring and evaluation, environmental and social risk management in policy lending, environmental policy lending and pandemic preparedness, and a wide range of field and desk-based project evaluations.