Dena Ringold is a senior economist in the Human Development Sector Unit for the Europe and Central Asia Region at The World Bank in Washington D.C. She has been involved various aspects of the operations, analysis and strategy development for the Roma Work Program; the Serbia and Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina Social Protection; the Slovakia Social Development Fund; and the Cambodia Social Protection Strategy.
Prior to this she was an Economist and a Research Analyst. Dena was based at Te Puni Kokiro, the Ministry of Maori Development, where she will work on a project titled Managing for Maori Outcomes in New Zealand: Policy-making in a multi-ethnic context.
She looked at how policies in New Zealand are designed to close gaps in human development outcomes for Maori while taking into account their unique culture. She also looked at how New Zealand strikes a balance between policies which are targeted and specifically designed to take into account characteristics of Maori communities (such as language in education), with broad-based policy measures that bring Maori into mainstream social service networks.