Ragui Assaad is a Professor of Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. He researches education, labor policy, and labor market analysis in developing countries with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. His current work focuses on inequality of opportunity in education, labor markets, transitions from school-to-work, employment and unemployment dynamics, family formation, informality, labor market responses to economic shocks, international migration, including the effects of forced migration. He is a Research Fellow at the Economic Research Forum (Cairo) and at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. Ragui is a member of the Steering Committee of the Solutions for Youth Employment program. He served as Regional Director for West Asia and North Africa for the Population Council, based in Cairo, and has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the International Labor Organization, the Ford Foundation, GIZ, UNICEF and UNDP. He holds a PhD degree in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University and a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.