About us

Ferdinando Regalia is the Social Sector Manager at the Inter-American Development Bank. Prior to his appointment, Mr. Regalia was Chief of the IDB's Social Protection and Health Division (SPH), where he was responsible for overseeing the IDB's support to borrowing member countries' response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the areas of health and social protection.
During his service as Head of SPH from 2010 to 2021, Mr. Regalia and his team led the implementation of innovative public-private partnerships and results-based financing mechanisms, such as the Salud Mesoamerica Initiative, to address health inequities. Mr. Regalia promoted research activities and projects that fostered strategies to increase the quality and sustainability of the health, early childhood development, and social inclusion and protection services sectors, working on a variety of enabling factors such as increased adoption of digital tools. Between 2008 and 2009, Mr. Regalia served as the advisor to the Vice President for Sectors and Knowledge of the IDB Group, providing quality oversight of operations and the Vice Presidency's economic and sector research agenda.

Chief of the Gender and Diversity Division at the IDB, where she leads efforts to improve access to quality services, economic opportunities, and strengthen the voice and representation of women, indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ. + community. As chief economist in the IDB's Health and Social Protection Division, she worked on child development and poverty reduction programs. She was a professor at Georgetown University and worked at the World Bank. Maria Caridad has a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Florencia Lopez Boo is a leading economist in the IDB's Social Protection and Health Division, where she works on child development and poverty reduction projects. She was a professor at the University of Louvain and worked at the World Bank and UNIDO. She has a PhD in Economics from Oxford University (Clarendon-Oxford University Press award). She is also a Young Lives Research Associate at the University of Oxford and the Institute for Labor Studies (IZA) in Bonn. Twitter: @florlopezboo

Marta Rubio-Codina is a Senior Economist in the IDB’s Social Protection and Health Division, where she works on early child development projects. Previously she was a researcher at the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London. She has a Doctorate in Economics from the Université de Toulouse in France.