Vera Songwe is a member of the Center’s External Advisory Board. She is a nonresident senior fellow in the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution. She also serves as chair of the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility and co-chair of the High-Level Panel on Climate Finance, two groups associated with the United Nations, where she works to improve African sovereign debt sustainability, address climate change and assist with the challenges of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Her global work focuses on policy reform for development and economic issues such as debt, macroeconomic stability, development finance, infrastructure development, private sector growth, and poverty and inequality.

Before her current roles, she served as the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa. She has also held several senior leadership roles with the International Finance Corporation and World Bank. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and a B.A. in political science from the University of Michigan and received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Michigan in 2022. She continues to engage with the University of Michigan faculty on select initiatives such as ‘Africa Week.’