2025 Emerging Markets Report

Lourdes Casanova is the Gail and Roberto Cañizares Director of the Cañizares Center for Emerging Markets and a Senior Lecturer at Cornell University’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. Formerly of the strategy department at INSEAD, Dr. Casanova specializes in international business with a focus on Latin America and multinationals from emerging markets.

In 2014 and 2015, Dr. Casanova was named one of the 50 most influential Iberoamerican intellectuals by Esglobal. She is a member of the board of directors of Boyce Thompson Institute.

Dr. Casanova is a Fulbright Scholar who holds a Ph.D. from Universidad de Barcelona and an M.A. from the University of Southern California.

Anne Miroux is Faculty Fellow at the Cañizares Center for Emerging Markets 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 debt in developing countries, 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 is the Regional Financial Sector Director, MCA, at the International Finance Corporation (IFC). She is responsible for IFC’s financial institutions group program for the MCT region, which involves supervising a team of 50 covering investment, upstream, and advisory engagements with a portfolio of US$3.3 billion and annual commitments of over US$1 billion. Ms. Aijazuddin was previously responsible as the global lead for IFC’s MSME investment and advisory activities, which exceeds cumulative investments of US$6 billion worldwide with over 300 MSME-related players, in addition to advisory services worth US$63.7 million in 68 projects across 30 countries.

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 policymakers 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. Her experience prior to joining IFC includes work in the banking sector. 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. He has experience in emerging markets, private sector development, competitiveness, investment promotion, and business climate assessment.

Mr. Pavone holds an MBA from HEC in Paris and a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Rome La Sapienza. He is a member of the Faculty Advisory Council of the Cañizares Center for Emerging Markets at the 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.