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Advisory Board

John Roome recently retired from the World Bank after 35 years, and is now consulting, sitting on boards and teaching all in the green and sustainable development space. His most recent full-time role at the World Bank was Regional Director, South Asia Sustainable Development. 

John Roome has been with the World Bank since 1989, working initially in Africa, and has held various senior leadership positions in the Bank in Africa, East and South Asia working in depth in over 40 countries.  He has also held global leadership roles including as Senior Director for Climate Change.  

His experience covers water supply and sanitation and water resource management, urban development, transport, energy, rural development, agriculture, environment, and social sectors, as well as post war recovery and disaster recovery and risk management and climate change.   

Over the last two decades he has led multiple departments that have each year delivered about $5bn (20-30 operations) in new lending and managed the implementation of about $25-30bn in portfolio investments.  He has managed an administrative budget of around $100m each year and teams of around 250-300 full time staff and 500+ part time staff. He has also guided the preparation of 20-30 analytic and advisory reports each year.  

Before joining the World Bank, John worked in Europe for Monitor Company, a leading corporate strategy consulting firm, and at Old Mutual, a South African Life Assurance Company. He was educated at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, where he obtained Masters Degrees in Econometrics and in Management Studies, and at the University of Cape Town where he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Economics, Statistics and Actuarial Science.