Georgetown Americas Institute

Ariel Fiszbein is a leading economist and policy expert specializing in human development, education, and social policy in Latin America. He is currently an Associated Researcher at the Centro de Implementación de Políticas Públicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento (CIPPEC) in Buenos Aires and serves on the Advisory Council of the Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura (OEI). From 2014 to 2024, he was Education Program Director at the Inter-American Dialogue, where he led influential work on early childhood development, education systems reform, education technology, skills development, and inclusion, positioning the Dialogue as a central platform for evidence-based education policy debates in the Western Hemisphere.

Previously, Dr. Fiszbein held a distinguished career at the World Bank, where he served as Chief Economist of the Human Development Network, overseeing global work on education, health, social protection, labor markets, governance, service delivery, and impact evaluation. He was the founding coordinator of the World Bank’s Development Impact Evaluation (DIME) initiative and played a senior advisory role across the institution, including in the Latin America and Caribbean region during periods of economic crisis. In addition to his policy leadership, he has taught at institutions including Johns Hopkins SAIS and Universidad de San Andrés, and has published extensively on education quality, early childhood development, social protection, inequality, and evaluation methods. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.