Eric Werker

Eric Werker is the William Saywell Professor at the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University. He researches how less developed countries can build more thriving and inclusive private sectors, particularly when they are rich in natural resources, and how international actors can play a positive role in creating successful societies. Werker has written on foreign aid, private sector development, natural resource governance, non-governmental organizations, inter-governmental organizations, refugees, and Ebola.

Outside of academia, Werker is a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development and an advisor to the Liberia program of the International Growth Centre. Werker has advised Liberian President Johnson Sirleaf on economic policy, chaired the academic directorate of the Canadian International Resources and Development Institute, consulted to the NGO Conservation International on low-carbon development and to the US Government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation on foreign aid projects, and worked with the Refugee Law Project in Uganda.

Werker earned his AB and PhD in economics at Harvard, and then spent nearly a decade on the faculty of Harvard Business School before returning home to Canada.