At the time of this interview, Zef Preci was the founding head of the independent, non-governmental Albanian Center for Economic Research, established in 1992 as Albania's first independent, non-governmental organization dedicated to research and analysis in support of a market economy and democracy. He served briefly in 2000 as the minister of public economy and privatization before he returned to ACER as its director. Later, he was an adviser to Albania's president and chairman of the Authority for Competition.  During his career, he also was a lecturer in entrepreneurial economics at Tirana University.

A career civil servant, Ciro Fernandes worked as a project manager for the Ministry of Social Security. He joined the newly-created Ministry of Administration and State Reform under Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

At the time of this interview, Rose N. Kafeero was deputy secretary of the Public Service Commission in Uganda. Upon graduation from university, she was appointed as a personnel officer and subsequently was promoted to higher positions. In 1992, she was elevated to head of department in the Ministry of Public Service and subsequently to her position at the time of the interview.  In that position, she also headed the Department of Monitoring and Guidance, which served as the secretariat to the Public Service Commission.

Cris Johnston attended Wabash College and Butler University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in business administration, respectively. Upon graduating, he served as chief deputy for the Indiana Treasurer. For 13 years, Johnston worked as a partner at Crowe Chizek and Company LLC. While there, he advised local and state governments in Indiana and Illinois. In 2005, Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana appointed Johnston to the position of Executive Director of Government Efficiency and Financial Planning within the Office of Management and Budget. 

Joseph Rugumyamheto worked in several capacities in the Tanzanian civil service for 30 years, ultimately serving for five years as permanent secretary of public service management in the President’s Office. He was responsible for the management of all civil servants in the Tanzanian government in terms of human resources and development. He previously served as chairman of the Government Board of the Eastern and Southern African Management Institute and chairman of the Board of Global Development Learning Centre Network. Rugumyamheto retired in 2006, and at the time of the interview he was chairman of the board and a director of Douglas Lake Minerals Ltd., a joint-venture company holding mineral concession rights in Tanzania. In April 2006, he was awarded the Jit Gill Memorial Award for Outstanding Public Service by the World Bank.

Baiba Petersone was the director of Latvia’s School of Public Administration. She began her career as a researcher in the Academy of Sciences. After entering politics during Latvia’s independence, she spent seven years as an active politician. In 1996 she entered the civil service as Director of the Department of Education Strategy in the Ministry of Education. From there she joined the State Chancellery as a member of the Policy Coordination Department. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in philosophy, though at the time the field really consisted of social science. 

Denyse Morin began working at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., in 1994 in the areas of public-sector governance and capacity development.  Before that, she worked at the World Bank office in Nairobi on issues related to water and sanitation. Prior to joining the World Bank, she worked at the Canadian International Development Agency.  She has lived in Kinshasa, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.  At the time of the interview, Morin was a senior public-sector specialist at the World Bank and the task team leader for the Public Service Reform Program in Tanzania.

At the time of this interview, Clay Wescott was a visiting lecturer at Princeton University and the principal regional cooperation specialist for the Asian Development Bank.  His work has covered e-government, regional cooperation, governance assessment, civil service reform, public finance, decentralization, citizen participation and combating corruption.  He worked all over the world, including Kenya, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia, Ghana, Nepal, Eritrea, Timor-Leste and other countries.  Before joining the ADB, he worked in the governance division of the United Nations Development Programme, assisting countries to formulate and carry out reform programs in Asia and the Pacific, Africa and the Caribbean.  He earned a bachelor's degree in government from Harvard University and a doctorate from Boston University, and he was an editorial board member of the International Public Management Journal and the International Public Management Review.