Barbara Nunberg

Barbara Nunberg is Visiting Scholar at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.  She is a leading expert on international public management and governance, specializing on civil service reform in developing areas, on which she consults to a wide range of international organizations and governments and has published extensively.

Much of Barbara’s career was at the World Bank, where she held a series of progressively senior posts and was engaged in analytic and operational work in all geographic regions.  In her last Bank post, she headed the Public Sector Reform program for the East Asia Pacific region.  She recently held the position of Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.  She has also been a Visiting Fellow at UCLA’s School of Public Affairs and Harvard’s Kennedy School.  She has taught on a visiting basis at UC Berkeley, Duke, NYU, and Georgetown, where she is currently an Adjunct Professor. Her current research focuses on public management in Brazil, institutional issues in international development assistance, and the politics of core governmental service restoration and reform in post-conflict settings.

At present, she leads a Wagner School-based Gates Foundation initiative focused on strengthening the international aid architecture for public financial management reforms in developing countries.

Barbara holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and an M.A. in Latin American Studies from Stanford University and a B.A. from Barnard College.

Areas of Expertise

Finance

Governance

International Development

Management