Producer/Presenter - The Why Factor BBC Radio Current Affairs
Lamia Kamal-Chaoui is the Director of the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE). She supports the Secretary-General in achieving the OECD’s mission to advance economic growth and social progress as well as contributing to other global agendas such as the G20, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the implementation of the SDGs. Ms Kamal-Chaoui has held several senior positions at the OECD since 1998 and was appointed Director of the CFE in 2016. She holds a Master’s Degree in Macroeconomics from the University of Paris Dauphine and a Master’s Degree in Foreign Languages and History from the University of Paris Diderot.
Laurence Boone is the OECD Chief Economist and Head of the Economics Department since July 2018. Ms. Boone ensures that the Department is at the forefront of Economic thinking and will coordinate the work of the Country Studies and Policy branches to create new opportunities and enhance synergies and co-operation with the whole of the OECD, including through contributions to horizontal projects.
Ms. Boone also supervises the contributions of the Economics Department to the New Approaches to Economic Challenges (NAEC) and Inclusive Growth (IG) initiatives. She is the Secretary General’s spokesperson on economic issues and serves as the OECD Representative at the Deputies’ meetings of the G20 Finance Track.
Carlotta Balestra is a Policy Analyst at the OECD working on advancing how societies define and improve well-being. She has contributed to the work behind the OECD Better Life Initiative — including the Better Life Index and the report How’s Life? Measuring Well-Being — and she currently coordinates a number of analytical and statistical projects on the measurement of well-being inequalities. In 2015, she conceptualised and contributed to the development of the OECD Compare Your Income web-tool, which allows to assess people’s perceptions of income inequality. Carlotta has published in peer-reviewed academic journals and contributed chapters in collected volumes, such as the Handbook of Research on Economic and Social Well-being.
Since January 2017, Véronique Willems is secretary general of SMEUnited (formerly known as UEAPME), the organisation that represents the Crafts and SMEs in Europe. Previously, Willems was head of European affairs at UNIZO, an SMEunited Belgian member organisation, where she was responsible for advocacy on policies affecting SMEs at the EU-level. She started her career over there first as a policy officer in charge of education, training and SME counselling and was then in charge of counselling and mentoring SMEs and advocacy at the regional level in the regional office (Vlaams-Brabant & Brussel). In January 2016, Willems was nominated deputy to the SME-representative for Belgium at the European Economic and Social Committee. She holds a law degree from Vrije Universiteit Brussel as well as a master’s degree in commercial sciences and business management from VLEKHO Brussel.