Jeanine Braithwaite is Professor of Public Policy, General Faculty, at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Prior to joining the Batten School in 2009, she was a Senior Economist at the World Bank, most recently in the Social Protection Group, Human Development Network.  Preceding her World Bank service, she worked at the International Monetary Fund and the US Census Bureau, on technical assistance to the newly independent countries of the former Soviet Union (IMF) and to the USSR (Census Bureau).   Braithwaite has also taught at Georgetown, George Mason, American, Maryland, and Kalamazoo College.

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, Swaziland), Turkey, and the former Soviet Union countries, and has provided policy advice to governments while on negotiating missions and staff visits. She has written many World Bank reports, including poverty assessments for Turkey, Russia, Armenia, Moldova, Hungary, and Ukraine, as well as social protection and labor reviews for Botswana, Kosovo, and Swaziland.  In addition, she has operational experience in Cambodia, Colombia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Jamaica, Jordan, Georgia, Mauritius, Kosovo, Bosnia, Romania, and Turkmenistan.

Braithwaite 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. She is now working with the Université Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar and the World Bank office in Senegal on a new policy research project on female-headed poverty in Senegal, as well as with other disciplinary colleagues at UVa on a research project on air pollution and poverty in Africa.

An alumna of the University of Virginia, Braithwaite served as a Resident Advisor and was an Echols Scholar and a member of the Raven, Jefferson Literary and Debating, and Omicron Delta Kappa Societies.  She went on to earn her master’s degree in Russian Area Studies from Georgetown and her doctorate in economics at Duke University.