Nicholas Burnett
Board Chair, UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning
Nicholas Burnett is currently a Senior Fellow at Results for Development (R4D), a Senior Research Fellow at the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), and an international education consultant.
His career in international development has included stints at the World Bank (1983-2000), as an economist and later as manager of its Human Development program in West and Central Africa; as an independent consultant on international education (2001-03, 2017-); at UNESCO (2004-09), as Director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report and then as Assistant Director-General for Education; and at Results for Development (2010-17) as founding Managing Director for Global Education. In addition to the UNA-NCA Advisory Council, Dr. Burnett serves on the Boards of Cap Plus, Americans for UNESCO, the Advisory Board of the Global Business School Network, and the Consultative Council of the NORRAG network for international policies and cooperation in education and training. He was also from 2016-21 chair of the Governing Board of UNESCO's International Institute for Educational Planning.
He was educated in economics at Oxford (BA), Harvard (Henry Fellow) and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (MA, PhD). He has been a visiting professor of international education policy at Nottingham University (UK) and Hiroshima and Kobe Universities (Japan) and in 2016 also supported The Education Commission chaired by UN Special Envoy Gordon Brown.
