Member Spotlight: Charles Ankisiba (Ghana/USA)
IAIA member Charles Ankisiba shares his journey from land management to social development, and some career-shaping advice.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello. I’m Charles Ankisiba. I’m Ghanaian and working with the World Bank as a Senior Social Development Specialist based in Washington.
What do you like most about being an IAIA member?
Being an IAIA member, what I like most is the fact that it’s a kind of global network of impact assessors coming from various countries working in different institutions. I work at the World Bank, but I’ve met people who also work in other MDBs — multi-development institutions — and I think that being connected to this group of professionals goes a long way to enhance yourself and also help you to bring what your expertise is to achieve global development.
What is one thing you enjoy about your current job/role?
I love my job because I’m working as a Social Development Specialist using the Bank’s sustainability instrument, which is what we call the Environmental Social Framework, to add value to projects that take place in our borrower countries, and it gives opportunity to add value to bring development to people who need most living in these countries.
What career advice do you live by?
I remember a few years ago, when I was studying at the University of London where I did my PhD, in the first year during the orientation, there was advice given by one of the professors. She said that she knows that we’ll be thinking out of the box, but we should remember to look over the wall. In other words, don’t just think about what you can do within your professional area. Try to look at what others are doing and see how best you can contribute or learn from them. And that has been something that I have always lived on. It has helped me in my current job because I have a background that probably would not fit directly into what I’m doing now. But here I am, working as a Senior Social Development Specialist, and I think every impact assessor, every young professional, should also go by that.
How did you first get involved in impact assessment?
My original background, which I studied back home in my country Ghana, is land management — what you call land economics — and I’ve gone on to study land management. I never once thought I’d be working in an area specifically as a Social Development Special, because we do land management and land administration — that’s the track we take. But I realize that within the development institutions, they do resettlement, they do land acquisitions, and I gradually over the years found myself working in mining institutions doing resettlement and eventually became a consultant to the Bank and transitioned into a full-time staff doing development work, which is basically not just limited to land administration or land management, but kind of contributing to all aspects of social issues, which I think is very helpful.
