TOR092: The Center For Global Development with Owen Barder

Owen Barder is Vice President, Director for Europe and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development - an organization that conducts research and analysis on a wide range of topics related to how policies and actions of the rich and powerful affect poor people in the developing world.

From 1988 to 2010, Owen was a British civil servant. During that time he worked at No.10 Downing Street, as the Private Secretary of Economic Affairs to the Prime Minister; in the UK Treasury, including as Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and in the Department for International Development, where he was variously Director of International Finance and Global Development Effectiveness, Director of Communications and Information, and head of the Africa Policy & Economics Department.

As a young Treasury economist, Owen set up the first UK government website, to put details of the 1994 budget online. During 2004-2006 Owen worked at CGD, mainly on the Advance Markets Commitment for vaccines. Owen has also worked in the South African Treasury on budget strategy; at Development Initiatives where he helped to establish the International Aid Transparency Initiative; and was a visiting scholar in economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

He has lived in several countries in Africa, most recently in Ethiopia during 2008-2011. Barder has been an Associate at the Institute for Government, a member of the Advisory Group of Twaweza, the Board of Publish What You Fund, and a member of the UK Government International Development Sector Transparency Panel. Owen is also a Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics.

He writes a personal blog at http://www.owen.org/blog and hosts a development podcast at http://DevelopmentDrums.org. He is on Twitter as @owenbarder.