Since 2018, Mr. Ingram has served as Chairman of Greentech Labs, a UK/South African-based bio-tech group. During this same period, he has been associated with the Global Growth Dialogue, a US-based group of prominent academics and senior public officials, dedicated to identifying best-policy options that sustain more inclusive economic growth. He has also advised the Trudeau government in Canada on a number of policy initiatives related to the Western Balkans. Mr. Ingram was recently named a 2020 Fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
Previously, Mr. Ingram served as President/CEO of The North-South Institute (NSI), Canada’s oldest independent development policy think-tank. As President he successfully transformed the Institute, culminating in 2011 and 2012, with NSI being ranked by the Global Policy Think-Tank Survey, as the world’s leading development policy think-tank with an annual budget of less than $5 million. In 2013 NSI was ranked as Canada’s leading development policy think-tank.
Prior to joining NSI, from 2006 to 2010, Mr. Ingram worked on behalf of CIDA and the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a senior advisor to the WTO’s Integrated Framework Program on trade and development issues in francophone Africa and the Middle East. During the same period, he served as a consultant on human rights issues for the World Bank and for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
In 2006, Mr. Ingram completed a thirty-year career at the World Bank, where he served in a variety of senior management positions, including from 2003-2006, as World Bank Special Representative to the United Nations and the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva. The focus of his efforts in this position was to address key development challenges relating to globalization, poverty alleviation, and global income disparities through seeking to develop policy consensus with the UN agencies based in Geneva, Rome and Vienna. In addition to the WTO, this included the ILO, UNCTAD, UNIDO, UNHCR, the WHO and the UN Human Rights Commission. He served during this period as a member of The U.N.’s Expert Task Force on The Right to Development chaired by the former President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. He also collaborated closely with The Global Fund for Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, thereby strengthening significantly a multilateral effort to address what was then emerging as a global HIV/AIDS pandemic.
For four years previously (2000-2003) he directed the World Bank office in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIH), managing the Bank’s program in support of BIH’s reconstruction, and its transformation from a centrally managed to a market-based economy. In close collaboration with the High Representatives appointed by the Dayton Agreement’s “Peace Implementation Council”, he coordinated the donor community’s support for economic development. During this period Mr. Ingram also wrote a monthly column on national economic issues in BIH’s two major newspapers. Mr. Ingram continues to be active in advising the authorities on issues relating to BIH’s development.
Prior to the Bosnia assignment, Mr. Ingram served for four years (1995-1999) as Deputy Director of the World Bank Institute. In close collaboration with the Bank’s President James Wolfensohn and Chief Economist, Joseph Stiglitz, he was part of the core team that led the effort to transform the Bank into a “knowledge institution”. Reflecting the renaming of the Institute from the Economic Development Institute to the World Bank Institute, this transformation included broadening the Institute’s programs from a narrow economic focus to social, political and governance issues. The result was increased partnerships with institutions in Africa, Eastern Europe, the US and Canada. During this period, Mr. Ingram also led the establishment of the World Bank’s Global Distance Learning Network - a satellite-based learning platform for dissemination of development knowledge globally - thereby revolutionizing the Bank’s capacity to dramatically scale up its impact.
Mr. Ingram’s work in the field also included four years (1992-1996) as director of the Bank’s Office in Cameroon, and four years (1979-1981) as the Deputy Resident Representative in Lagos, Nigeria. From Washington, as Deputy Division Chief for the Sahel Division (1985-1991) he also led and managed Bank assistance to economic reform programs in Burkina Faso and Senegal, both of which were categorized by the Bank as “best practice”. Previously he served as Senior Country Officer for the former Yugoslavia (1981-1985) and Loan Officer/Economist for Turkey, Morocco and Cyprus (1976-1979).
Before joining the World Bank, Mr. Ingram represented the International Development Research Center (IDRC), a Canadian public corporation, as its Regional Representative in Health and Population Sciences for the Middle East and North Africa, based in Beirut, Lebanon (1975). From 1972-1975, in Ottawa, he served first as a project officer in population and health sciences, and subsequently as Executive Assistant to the President of IDRC. From 1970-1972, he taught at a private college in Ivory Coast as a SUCO/CUSO (Services Universitaires Canadien Outre-mer) volunteer. He began his development career working on behalf of Canada’s Frontier College as a gold miner and teacher/mentor at the Renabie Gold Mine in northern Ontario.
Over the course of his career, Mr. Ingram has lectured and been a panelist in conferences at numerous universities including: Dartmouth College, Oxford, the London School of Economics, McMaster University, the University of Toronto, Queen’s University, the University of Ottawa, Carleton, McGill, Dalhousie, France’s International Institute of Public Administration, the Universities of Geneva and of St. Gallen, IMD in Lausanne, the Bled School of Management in Slovenia, the University of Sarajevo, the American University of Sarajevo, and the Universities of Bologna and Siena in Italy. He served for a decade on the editorial board of the World Bank publication ¨Development Outreach¨ and, in 2006, was the guest contributing editor to a special edition on human rights and development. He currently contributes regular op eds to IPolitics and The Hill Times, two of Canada’s leading public policy newspapers.
His work has focused on international trade, growth and employment issues, structural reforms, training and knowledge transfer, international public goods management, public health and post-conflict reconstruction and development. He has published numerous articles and scholarly papers on issues relating to post-conflict development and counter-insurgency in Afghanistan as well as on global development and Canadian foreign and development policy. He has testified before the United States Senate Committee dealing with international development and US commerce, and Canada’s House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Development. Mr. Ingram holds a Masters degree in political economy and studied at McMaster University in Canada and the Harvard Business School. He is fluent in French and Italian and has a working knowledge of Spanish. He currently resides in Italy.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS BY JOSEPH INGRAM
Energy Security Year in Review 2023
The Roots of Crisis in Francophone Africa
Accelerating the Energy Transition: Enabling Photovoltaic Solutions
