The World Bank Group has ap­point­ed Juan Car­los Al­varez as the new coun­try man­ag­er for Trinidad and To­ba­go, uni­fy­ing coun­try-lev­el lead­er­ship across the in­sti­tu­tion to en­hance its de­vel­op­ment im­pact in sup­port of job cre­ation and T&T’s pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor pri­or­i­ties.

Al­varez will lead World Bank Group in­sti­tu­tions in T&T, in­clud­ing: the In­ter­na­tion­al Bank for Re­con­struc­tion and De­vel­op­ment (IBRD), the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance Cor­po­ra­tion (IFC), and the Mul­ti­lat­er­al In­vest­ment Guar­an­tee Agency (MI­GA). In this ca­pac­i­ty, he will pro­mote a more in­te­grat­ed agen­da to mo­bilise fi­nanc­ing, knowl­edge, and pri­vate in­vest­ment.

Most­ly re­cent­ly, he served as World Bank coun­try man­ag­er for An­go­la and São Tomé and Príncipe where he led the in­sti­tu­tion’s en­gage­ments with both coun­tries. Since join­ing the World Bank Group in 2000, Al­varez has worked as le­gal coun­sel across re­gions, in­clud­ing roles in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean and South Asia, ad­vis­ing coun­try man­age­ment units on le­gal, op­er­a­tional and pol­i­cy mat­ters.

Al­varez holds a Ju­ris Doc­tor (JD) from the Uni­ver­si­dad Autóno­ma de Cen­tro Améri­ca (UA­CA) in Cos­ta Ri­ca and a Mas­ter of Laws (LLM) in In­ter­na­tion­al Law from the Wash­ing­ton Col­lege of Law at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty in Wash­ing­ton, DC.