Profile

Mary McNeil

Team Lead, Governance Global Practice

Bio

Mary McNeil is a former Team Lead in the Governance Global Practice at the World Bank. In that capacity she provided strategic advice on the mainstreaming of citizen engagement and open and accountable governance throughout the Bank’s portfolio. She was the Task Team Lead for development of the Global Partnership for Social Accountability and the Affiliated Networks for Social Accountability and has been involved in citizen participation, community-driven development, and social accountability throughout her 20-year career at Bank.

She is the author of, Demanding Good Governance: Lessons for Social Accountability Initiatives in Africa and founding editor of the Bank's Development Outreach. Past positions include managing global programs on community empowerment and social inclusion and civil society capacity building (World Bank Institute), and operationally in the water and sanitation and urban sectors. She has worked in all regions, including managing country-based programs in Ghana, Bosnia, the Philippines and Tajikistan.

Before joining the Bank she was a journalist at Congressional Quarterly, the Smithsonian Institution and the National Academy of Sciences. She holds a MA in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where she was the Joel Leff Fellow in Political Economy, and a BA with honors from Wake Forest University.