Since 1 January 2019 Pedro has been Director of the Human Development Report Office and lead author of the Human Development Report. Prior to this, Pedro served as Director, Strategic Policy, at the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (from October 2014), and Chief Economist and Head of the Strategic Advisory Unit at the Regional Bureau for Africa (from 1 December 2009).

Before that, he was Director of the Office of Development Studies (ODS) from March 2007 to November 2009, and Deputy Director of ODS, from October 2001 to February 2007. His work on financing for development and on global public goods was published by Oxford University Press in books he co-edited (The New Public Finance: Responding to Global Challenges, 2006; Providing Global Public Goods: Managing Globalization, 2003).

He has published on inequality, the economics of innovation and technological change, and development in, amongst other journals, the African Development Review, Review of Development Economics, Eastern Economic Journal, Ecological Economics, Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Food Policy, and Technological Forecasting and Social Change. He co-edited several books including: Innovation, Competence Building, and Social Cohesion in Europe- Towards a Learning Society (Edward Elgar, 2002) and Knowledge for Inclusive Development (Quorum Books, 2001).

Prior to coming to UNDP, he was an Assistant Professor at the Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal, teaching and researching on science, technology and innovation policy. He has degrees in Physics from Instituto Superior Técnico and in Economics from the Technical University of Lisbon and a Ph. D. in Public Policy from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied with a Fulbright scholarship.

Sanjay G. Reddy is an Associate Professor of Economics at The New School for Social Research. He is an Affiliated Faculty Member of the Politics Department of the New School for Social Research.  He teaches development economics, microeconomics, philosophy and economics, and other subjects.

He has published widely in academic journals in economics and related subjects and given many prominent academic lectures. He was elected a Fellow of the Human Development and Capabilities Association. He is or has been a member of the editorial advisory boards of the American Review of Political Economy, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Development, Ethics & International Affairs, the European Journal of Development Research, Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric, Humanity, the Journal of Globalization and Development, the Review of Agrarian Studies and the Review of Income and Wealth and was Associate Editor of the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities. He was a lead author of the International Panel on Social Progress.

He has held fellowships from the Center for Ethics and the Center for Population and Development Studies at Harvard University, the Center for Human Values at Princeton University, the Justitia Amplificata program of the Goethe University of Frankfurt and Free University of Berlin, and the Advanced Research Collaborative of the City University of New York. He has received research grants from various sources.

He was a member of the Independent High-level Team of Advisers to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations on the longer-term positioning of the UN Development System. He has also served as a speaker and moderator on various High Level panels of the Economic and Social Council and other UN bodies. He has been a member of the advisory panel of the UN Development Programme's Human Development Report, the UN Statistics Division's Steering Committee on Poverty Statistics, the advisory board of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and in other advisory functions for international and non-governmental organisations.  He is a co-founder and team leader of the Global Consumption and Income Project. He has been quoted, his work has been cited, and his opinion articles have been published, by news media including Barron’s, the Boston Globe, the Boston Review, the Economist, Foreign Policy, the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Hindu, The Nation, the National Post, the New York Review of Books, and Project Syndicate. His work has been translated into multiple languages.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed the Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Dr. Yesim Tozan PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the School of Global Public Health at New York University. Her research focuses on the economic burden of disease and the costs and cost-effectiveness of public health interventions and programs. Dr. Tozan is interested in using economic evaluation to inform health priority setting and initiate and support policy-level change and improvement in low- and middle-income countries. Her research focus has been on infectious disease prevention and control, with an emphasis on vector-borne diseases and HIV/AIDS, as well as tobacco cessation and mental health promotion in vulnerable populations impacted by poverty. In several large-scale studies supported by the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Tozan leads the economic evaluation component of trials testing innovative economic empowerment and social protection interventions, as well as school-based early childhood development and family-based mental health promotion interventions in low-resource settings. She also pursues interdisciplinary research investigating the dynamics of vector-borne disease emergence and spread as it relates to climate, vector biology, and human mobility to advance the development and implementation of disease surveillance and early warning systems. Her collaborative research in this area aims to inform prioritization of intervention strategies and resource-allocation decisions, and develop real-time decision-making platforms for proactive outbreak response and management. Previously, Dr. Tozan served as Senior Task Force Associate for the UN Millennium Project’s Task Force on HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Tuberculosis and Access to Essential Medicines. She holds a PhD in public affairs from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.