Jeanine Braithwaite is a Lecturer at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.  Previously she was Professor of 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 USSR. 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 specialized in the study of medium-income Africa (South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini), Turkey and the former Soviet Union countries. She 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.

Kamwoo Lee (Lead Author, UVA PhD Systems and Information Engineering) and Braithwaite completed a set of poverty maps completed a set of poverty maps for Sub-Saharan Africa which were published in World Development (2022). Paper DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.106028 Dataset DOI: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/5OGWY

Braithwaite continued 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, with USD 820 million raised before the coup.  Lending is currently paused. Braithwaite received her third Vice Presidential Unit Team Award for her work on that project.

Braithwaite worked with the Université Cheikh Anta Diop and Professor Sally Pusede (UVA Environmental Sciences) and team, examining air pollution and poverty in Dakar.  Braithwaite helped to set up formal cooperation between UCAD and UVa.  She recently completed a project on female-headed household poverty in Senegal, and 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.