2025 Emerging Markets Report

Lourdes Casanova is a senior lecturer and the Gail and Roberto Cañizares Director of the Emerging Markets Institute in the SC Johnson School of Management at Cornell University. She has been named one of the 50 most influential Iberoamerican intellectuals and one of the 30 most influential Iberoamerican women intellectuals by Esglobal, a digital magazine on international relations. Dr. Casanova is a Fulbright Scholar and has a Master’s degree from the University of Southern California as well as a Ph.D. from the University of Barcelona. Her commentary has been featured in Latin Trade, Agenda Publica, CNN en Español, and Voice of America.

Anne Miroux is Faculty Fellow at the Emerging Markets Institute in the Johnson School of Business at Cornell University. She has over 30 years of experience in international trade and finance. Dr. Miroux began her career in the United Nations Center on Transnational Corporations in New York, where she was involved in the negotiations on the UN Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations. In the mid 1980s she joined the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), where she specialized in issues related to developing-country debt, foreign direct investment and transnational corporations, and technology and innovation policies. For several years, Dr. Miroux led the organization’s work on foreign direct investment (FDI) statistics and directed the World Investment Reports (WIR), the United Nations flagship report on FDI and transnational corporations. She also served as the editor of the UN Transnational Corporations Journal. Dr. Miroux published a number of papers and articles and led research projects and technical assistance activities in developing countries on debt, FDI, and development.

Until late 2015, Dr. Miroux was the Director of the Division on Technology and Logistics in UNCTAD, in charge of the organization’s work on technology and trade logistics. She was also the Head of the Secretariat of the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD). Dr. Miroux is a member of the Advisory Board of the Technology and Management Center of the Department of International Development at Oxford University as well as a member of the Board of NetExplo. Dr. Miroux has an MBA from HEC – Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (Jouy-en-Josas, France) and a diploma from IEP (Institut d’Etudes Politiques – Paris). She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from University of Paris I – Sorbonne.

Momina Aijazuddin serves as the International Finance Corporation’s Senior Industry Manager of the Financial Institutions Group, MCT (Middle East, Central Asia, Turkey, Pakistan, and Afghanistan) region, supervising a team of 50 covering investment, upstream, and advisory engagements with a portfolio of US$3.3 billion. She was previously the global lead for IFC’s MSME investment and advisory activities, which included oversight of the work in Responsible Forum (which IFC manages for the GPFI/G20), institutional transformation, risk management, and product development. Ms. Aijazuddin led IFC’s efforts to scale up private-sector commitments with strategic partners in the digital finance, microfinance, and fintech space committed to achieving the World Bank Group’s Universal Financial Access by 2020. She was also a core member of the drafting team for the G20 Digital Financial Inclusion Principles. 

Ms. Aijazuddin brings over two decades of investment transaction experience in financial services, microfinance, and manufacturing sectors in over 70 countries across Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, MENA, and LAC regions. Her technical expertise includes setting up greenfield MFIs in MENA and Asia, transforming institutions to become regulated banks, and engaging with policy makers and industry players. Ms. Aijazuddin has spent the last few years heavily engaged in IFC’s financial inclusion efforts in China with leading banks and fintech players and handled key relationships with Mastercard and Ant Financial as well as leading MSME banks around the world. She currently serves on the Microfinance Enhancement Facility Board (MEF). Ms. Aijazuddin holds a Master’s degree in Economics with Distinction from the London School of Economics.

Lorenzo Pavone oversees the Emerging Markets Network (EMnet), a network of multinational companies promoting policy dialogue and analysis on business in emerging markets, hosted by the OECD Development Centre. Mr. Pavone has experience in emerging markets, private sector development, competitiveness, investment promotion, and business climate assessment. He held several positions in private sector development and global relations during his nine years at the OECD and previously worked in consulting and international development. Mr. Pavone holds an MBA from HEC Paris and a Master’s degree in Economics from Sapienza – Università di Roma. He is a member of the Faculty Advisory Council of the Emerging Markets Institute at Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.

Xuelin Bu is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Economics and Management at Wuhan University. She received her Master’s degree from the University of Sussex in the U.K. Ms. Bu is a member of the Centre for Global Strategy Research at Wuhan University. Her research interests are global strategy and corporate social responsibility, especially for Chinese multinationals.