Powering a Learning Society During an Age of Disruption

Sungsup Ra has over 25 years of experience across a broad range of development issues including education. As a strategic and innovative leader, he has led high level policy dialogue with developing countries and significantly contributed to Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) recent expansion in the education sector. He has introduced new financing modalities such as results-based lending to ADB. He pushed the boundaries of education operations to support cross sectoral issues such as food crisis, youth unemployment, digital transformation, clean energy, vulnerable urban population, and road safety through education and skills development projects. He is actively involved in global initiatives such as the International Financing Facility for Education, the Global High-tech Agricultural University Network, and the 17 Rooms initiative by the Brookings Institution. Dr. Ra has broad experience working with public and private entities such as Samsung and Korean National Pension. He also taught at leading universities such as International Christian University, The University of Tokyo, Korea University, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is currently Director of South Asia Human and Social Development Division and Chair of the Education Sector Group at ADB.

Shanti Jagannathan has over 25 years of experience with reforms and transformation in school education, technical and vocational education and training and higher education in Asia. She has led policy research studies on skills for greening economies, Asia’s knowledge-based economies, and implications of industry 4.0 on education and training. Her recent work includes a guidance note on Education and the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Asia and the Pacific, designing and judging hackathons for digital reskilling and upskilling for displaced workers and digital platforms for education. She works on education sector policies and provides technical advice to ADB’s lending and knowledge partnerships for education. She has over a dozen publications from her work in ADB, including two previous books with Springer and special issues of the journals ‘Prospects’ and ‘International Journal of Training Research.’ She is currently Principal Education Specialist at ADB.

Rupert Maclean AO is (concurrently) Adjunct Professor of International Education at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University, Melbourne; University of Tasmania, Hobart; Education University of Hong Kong; and University Tun Hussein Onn, Malaysia. He has held two United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Chairs on Technical and Vocational Education and Training, one in Hong Kong, China, and the other in Qatar. Between 2007 and 2015 he was an Honorary Research Fellow, University of Oxford, Department of Education. In December 2018 he was appointed a consultant of the Belt and Road Alliance for International Applied Education and Training, People’s Republic of China. In 2011 he was awarded an Order of Australia (AO) in the Queen's Birthday Honours List for distinguished service to improving education and schooling in developing countries, particularly through UNESCO.