Jeanine Braithwaite is a professor of public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Prior to joining the Batten School in 2009, she was a senior economist in the Social Protection Unit at the World Bank’s Human Development Network. Preceding her World Bank service, she worked at the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Census Bureau, providing technical assistance to the U.S.S.R. as well as the newly-independent countries of the former Soviet Union. Braithwaite has taught at Kalamazoo College and Georgetown, George Mason, American and Maryland universities.

At the World Bank, Braithwaite worked on social protection policy and poverty analysis. She specializes in the study of medium-income Africa (South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini), Turkey and the former Soviet Union countries. She has provided policy advice to governments while on negotiating missions and staff visits, and her many World Bank reports include poverty assessments for Turkey, Russia, Armenia, Moldova, Hungary and Ukraine, as well as social protection and labor reviews for Botswana, Kosovo and Eswatini. In addition, she has operational experience in Cambodia, Colombia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Jamaica, Jordan, Georgia, Mauritius, Kosovo, Bosnia, Romania and Turkmenistan.

Braithwaite and lead author Kamwoo Lee (World Bank, UVA Ph.D. Systems and Information Engineering) completed a set of poverty maps for Sub-Saharan Africa, a project which has generated much interest. Public release of the data is expected in 2021 via the World Bank.

Braithwaite continues her work with the World Bank as a consultant on the Sudan social protection program. While on leave from Batten, she served as a member of the core team for the Sudan Family Support Project (SFSP), a USD 1.9 billion credit to the Government of Sudan from the World Bank and donor countries. Braithwaite received her third Vice Presidential Unit Team Award for her work on that project. While she recently resigned as a core team member, Braithwaite remains a senior consultant to the SFSP team.

Currently, Braithwaite is working with the Université Cheikh Anta Diop and Professor Sally Pusede (UVA Environmental Sciences) and team, examining air pollution and poverty in Dakar. She recently completed a project on female-headed household poverty in Senegal, and has conducted a program of joint research with the University of Venda and the University of Limpopo, South Africa, on poverty, social welfare and traditional healing in Limpopo Province.

An alumna of the University of Virginia, Braithwaite was a resident assistant, an Echols Scholar, and a member of the Raven, Jefferson Literary and Debating, and Omicron Delta Kappa societies. She went on to earn a master’s degree in Russian area studies from Georgetown University and a doctorate in economics from Duke University.