Karin Schelzig

Karin is a poverty and social protection specialist with more than 22 years of experience leading social policy dialogue and development program design and implementation with governments and civil society in East and Southeast Asia. She has focused on social assistance and cash transfers, multidimensional poverty analysis and poverty targeting, the graduation approach and cash plus programming, early childhood and basic education, technical and vocational education and training, community-driven development, and gender analysis and women’s economic empowerment. Based at the ADB resident mission in Beijing since 2019, Karin is supporting social assistance reforms, social service delivery, and healthy and age-friendly cities in People's Republic of China, and shock-responsive social protection and inclusive education in Mongolia. In her previous assignment at ADB headquarters in Manila, she covered social protection and education in Indonesia, Lao PDR, and the Philippines. She also spent five years as a social sector specialist at the resident mission in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Prior to joining ADB in 2004, Karin’s work as a poverty specialist with Development Alternatives, Inc. in Washington, D.C. included a long-term assignment in Kiev, Ukraine. She completed a Ph.D. in Development Studies from the London School of Economics in 1999 with a dissertation on measuring multidimensional poverty in the Philippines.