Stefano Pettinato joined the UNDP Washington Representation Office as Deputy Director in November 2021 after 19 years with UNDP, most recently as Resident Representative in Bahrain.

Stefano has also served as UNDP Deputy Resident Representative in El Salvador and Belize, Regional Policy Adviser at the UNDP Regional Centre in Panama and Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean in New York, and Policy Adviser in UNDP’s Human Development Report Office in New York, where he co-authored the 2003 and 2004 editions of UNDP’s flagship Human Development Report. Before joining UNDP, Stefano served the Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank in Washington DC and as a senior research fellow at the Brookings Institution and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Stefano has also worked as a researcher at the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago and at SWIFT in Brussels. He co-authored the book Happiness and Hardship: Opportunity and Insecurity in New Market Economies with Carol Graham (Brookings Press, 2002) and has published journal articles and book chapters on the political economy of poverty, inequalities, and subjective well-being, and on social security reform. He holds a BA and an MA in development and public economics from the University of Florence and an MA with concentration in international economics from the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies.