Astrid Haas is the policy director of the IGC. She was previously the Senior Country Economist for Cities and head of the Cities that Work Initiative at the IGC. Her current research specializes in the area of municipal and infrastructure finance, in particular, but she also works on other areas such as urban mobility and urban land tenure more broadly.

She works with various mayors, city managers and their teams in Africa and Asia to support research and evidence-based policy reform. She holds an MA in international economics and international development from Johns Hopkins University (in Italy and the USA). In 2016, she was nominated by the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, University of Cape Town as one of Africa’s Young Leaders. She is undertaking her PhD in the innovative governance of large urban systems at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland).