Before coming to the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs as a Master in Public Affairs student in 2021, Martina Bergues spent five years working in the São Paulo city government. After graduating, she shifted gears, joining the Inter-American Development Bank as a digital government consultant, first in her native Brazil and more recently in Washington, D.C.
According to Bergues, the opportunity that development banking gave her to scale up her public service was a big reason for her career transition.
“Before joining SPIA, I worked within a single local government,” she said. “Now, I have the chance to support more than 20 different governments on the policies I’m most passionate about. This variety has given me both a regional and national perspective on how different governments approach similar issues and on how to leverage best practices across the region.”
Bergues is one of numerous Princeton SPIA alumni to have found fulfillment in development banking all over the world. In helping to fund economic development projects that commercial lenders often shy away from, they are engaged in a unique kind of public service.
As director of outcomes at the World Bank Group, Lisandro Martín MPA ’07 is responsible for establishing frameworks to assess the results of WBG’s activities. Martín is driven by “the motivation to make an impact in the world,” and he is gratified that the results of his efforts are tangible and visible.
“Development banks are a good instrument that works across multiple sectors in the places where people need the greatest support,” he said. “My work is rewarded by seeing the real impact that we make on people.”
Charles Fraser MPA ’24, an analyst in the Sustainable Infrastructure Group at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, points out that institutions such as his can serve as a bridge between the public and private sectors.
“Multilateral development banks are special because they leverage a relatively small amount of capital invested by their shareholders — primarily governments — to raise a lot more funding from private investors and thereby channel resources very effectively towards development projects,” Fraser said. “This is why it appeals to me from a ‘big picture’ perspective.”
Before becoming a managing director and the head of emerging markets and blended finance for Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Christopher Marks Ph.D. ’96 was a senior advisor at the African Development Bank Group as well as a U.S. advisor to the Polish Ministry of Finance. He credits his time at Princeton for giving him the ability to serve the public good in both development-funding and policy-advisory roles.
“I sit in the luckiest possible way across banking work, in which we have teams that literally create financing packages for social infrastructure for schools and ports and hospitals and roads and a lot of renewable-energy activities,” Marks said.
While Princeton SPIA’s curriculum is renowned for its breadth and interdisciplinarity, alumni who work in development banking observe that the field requires more focus. They advise students interested in it to dive more deeply into the areas that appeal to them.
“International development institutions such as the World Bank value specialization,” said Ana Cristina Alonso Soria MPA ’18, a private sector specialist at the bank. “A strong policy and quantitative toolkit is necessary but not sufficient in this field. While our Princeton education gives us a broad skillset, there is always room to choose a more defined field within our concentrations or build on the professional experience we gained before graduate school.”
According to Martín, the quantitative foundation of Princeton SPIA’s curriculum has been a significant benefit during his time in development banking – but so has the School’s emphasis on clear communication.
“I often say that part of the success that I've had in a way in my career is trying to combine the rigor of the data with inspiration,” he said. “So, bringing to this the ability to communicate the data in ways that are accessible to policymakers, to people, to different audiences that perhaps are not so quantitatively literate, but they get inspiration from the way in which the stories are being told with numbers.”
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