Jaime Saavedra

Jaime currently leads the Education Global Practice at the World Bank Group, where he oversees a US$ 20 billion portfolio of education financing. He rejoined the World Bank Group in 2017 from the Government of Peru, where he served as Minister of Education from 2013 through 2016, being the first minister to continue in the same position across two administrations. During his tenure with the Ministry of Education, the performance of Peru’s education system improved substantially as measured by international learning assessments and the university system underwent its largest reform in decades.

Prior to assuming his role as Minister for Education of Peru, Jaime had a ten-year career at the World Bank where, most recently, he served as Director for Poverty Reduction and Equity as well as Acting Vice President, Poverty Reduction & Economic Management Network. In 2012 Jaime co-led the team that developed the twin goals of Eliminating Extreme Poverty and Building Shared Prosperity, that since then defines the mission of the World Bank Group. He has also been Executive Director of GRADE, a leading social science think tank in Peru. Throughout his career, Jaime, a Peruvian national, has led groundbreaking work in the areas of poverty reduction and inequality, labor markets, education reforms, the economics of education, and monitoring and evaluation systems. He has worked with several international organizations and think tanks, among them the Inter-American Development Bank, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, International Labour Organization, and the National Council of Labor in Peru.

Over the years, he has supported Enseña Perú and its efforts to place teachers in classrooms and foster the leadership of its alumni; spoken at global conferences;visited many network partners in their own countries; and worked with us globally to champion the importance of developing leadership at every level of the education system.

Jaime has also held teaching and research positions in academia and has published extensively. He holds a Ph.D in economics from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s degree in economics from the Catholic University of Peru.