Lyaziza Sabyrova is the Director of the Regional Cooperation and Operations Coordination Division in Central and West Regional Department. After obtaining her PhD degree in Economics from Indiana University (Bloomington, IN, USA), she joined ADB in 2000. She worked on infrastructure projects in the People’s Republic of China, Central Asian, and South Caucasus countries. She was posted in ADB’s Resident Mission in the Kyrgyz Republic from 2006-2008. In the following three years, she was on a special leave from the ADB, during which she was a Deputy Director of an independent private economic think tank in Kazakhstan, the RAKURS Center for Economic Analysis. More recently, she led the work on ADB's Country Partnership Strategies for several Central Asian and South Caucasus countries, steered the work of the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) Institute, and was involved in the Department’s analytical work and knowledge management.