Ross Butler is the Lead Social Development Specialist for the World Bank’s East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region and is responsible for coordination of Social Risk Management functions across the region. He is based in Singapore.

Ross is an urban planner and development anthropologist who has extensive experience in country-team coordination and providing direct social risk management support to high-risk and complex operations across key development sectors in diverse geographic, political, economic, and social settings. Ross has extensive experience in social assessment, land tenure, indigenous peoples, consultation, capacity building and analytical work in thirty countries in Europe and Central Asia, South Asia, and EAP, including fragile and conflict affected (FCV) countries. He was previously based in Beijing where he was the Social Sustainability & Inclusion (SSI) coordinator for China & Mongolia. Prior to that role he was the social risk management coordinator for the 12 Pacific Island countries, based in Sydney.

Prior to joining the World Bank in 2013, Ross worked with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) where he was the social risk coordinator for the Central and West Asia Department based in ADB’s Manila headquarters. Earlier in his career, Ross worked for a major international engineering advisory firm and as a director of a sustainability consultancy advising on environmental and social risks for public and private public partnership (PPP) projects globally.